A Native's Return Quotes

“At home, American critics of that system, especially in the American Medical Association, had derided British “socialized medicine” as impossible and unwanted. But this was not true. It was extremely popular among all classes, all parties. While I was in England, even the Conservative party, girding”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988

“Among those elected that fall of 1946 was a little-known local judge, Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, to the Senate, and an even lesser known local politician in California, Richard M. Nixon, to the House. Both had accused their opponents of sympathy with Communism and of having “Communist” support. The voters had fallen for it, as they usually do in this country.”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988

“Every person’s life is of importance to himself, of course: … But in the universe of infinite space and time, it is insignificant. … Perhaps Carl Becker, the historian, and one of the most civilized men I ever knew, grasped best our piddling place in the infinite.

Man [he wrote] is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him. Unparented, unassisted and undirected by omniscient or benevolent authority, he must fend for himself, and with the aid of his own limited intelligence find his way about in an indifferent universe.

And in a rather savage world! The longer I lived and the more I observed, the clearer it became to me that man had progressed very little beyond his earlier savage state. After twenty million years or so of human life on this Earth, the lot of most men and women is, as Hobbes said, “nasty, brutish, and short.” Civilization is a thin veneer. It is so easily and continually eroded or cracked, leaving human beings exposed for what they are: savages.
What good three thousand years of so-called civilization, of religion, philosophy, and education, when … men go on torturing, killing and repressing their fellowmen?”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return: 1945-1988

“NBC had cleaned out its last two liberal commentators, John Vandercook and Bob St. John, the year before. CBS recently had edged Quincy Howe out of his 6 P.M. daily spot as soon as a sponsor had bought it and had given it to Eric Sevareid, the new head of the Washington bureau. The era of McCarthy lay just ahead, but already there were signs foreshadowing it. I had not taken the change of climate as seriously perhaps as I should. I had been through it all before—in my years in Nazi Germany.”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988

“Still, the talk went on, especially in the nation’s capital, though by the end of 1946, I noted, it was beginning to shift toward fear of Russian spies. Wild charges were beginning to be made that some of our most eminent statesmen were agents of Moscow and participants in a Communist conspiracy. Certain politicians were drumming up fear that our Communists, who couldn’t elect a dogcatcher in any state of the Union, were about to take over the Republic.”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988

“Seeking to forget makes exiles of us all the longer. The secret of redemption lies in remembrance.”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988

“have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the minds of men.”
― William L. Shirer, A Native's Return, 1945–1988