'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.
Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.
Coalitions though successful have always found this, that their triumph has been brief.
I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.
We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.