Mother Daughter Traitor Spy Quotes

“If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive, to make the world more livable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that’s something no one else will do, and it’s a job that must be done.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“It’s all too easy for us to fall into hate. For any of us. For all of us. I used to think, “It could never happen here”—and it not only could have, but almost did. And there’s every reason to believe it could happen again in the future.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“I’m absolutely sick at all the ignorant things people are saying—in private and in public. We can’t dismiss it, because underneath that rage is fear—and below that, pain. Letting go of the rage means facing the fear and the pain. And that’s not going to happen any time soon—if ever.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“Stop the spread of lies that feed their fears. We can handle the truth here in America. It’s the lies that put us all in danger.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“It was correspondence from the leaders of the American Nationalist Confederation, a coalition of several militant Christian groups, describing their plan to overthrow the American government if Roosevelt won the 1940 election.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“A group of Americans plotting treason against their own government, she thought. With Nazis assisting them. If I didn’t see it for myself, I’d never believe it.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“Little by little, small and regular acts of violence had escalated in Berlin, in Germany. The gradualness inoculated people.
How long did it take before people would look the other way when a man was dragged screaming to a van and shot in L.A.? In the United States?
Three years, Jonah thought. It only took three years in Germany. And only two more until Kristallnacht.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“Once upon a time, people would have called the police. But in 1936, German people knew better. The police wouldn’t come—or if they did, they’d just join in. People adapted, adjusted, changed in ways they never could have imagined. What would have been terrifying and perverse once was now commonplace—even normal. They turned over in their beds when they heard shrieks in the night, they ignored the sounds of their neighbors being arrested, they looked the other way at the ghettos. They ignored the rumors of the camps.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“There’s an undercover movement going on in America right now, in Los Angeles.. It’s a nativist, nationalist, fascist movement, fed with money and propaganda by Nazi Germany. Normal, fine Americans are being indoctrinated, then going on to propagate the party line advanced by Hitler’s agents here. Some of the American Nazis are truly horrific people, but others are doing it sincerely, for their country, to be good Americans.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“I want to ‘make an angry sound against injustice.’ After all, it’s our job as citizens to protest—and ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“Hitler’s a psychopath, and he’s infected an army of psychopaths here in America. Right now, we’re at the same crossroads Germany faced in 1933—and we want to make sure we don’t go down the same path here. Whatever the Nazis are doing, whatever they’re planning, we need to know about it. To avert disaster.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“As the Rabbi Hillel said, ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“I’m one of a group of anonymous American citizens who was alarmed by the rise of Nazism in Germany, beginning in 1933. It’s been paralleled by the rise of fascism in this country, particularly in Los Angeles. We’re concerned German Nazi enemy agents have infiltrated Southern California and are turning American citizens against democracy.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“No one believed Hitler’s Brownshirts could seize control of Germany in 1933, but they did. And now look where they are! The window of opportunity to stop them without a major war was missed. But, at least in this country, we still have a fighting chance against our own Nazis.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“We’re now graduates of Hunter College, the inheritors of a radical idea: that educating women can change, well, everything. And education for all women, not just the daughters of the elite.

But most of us standing before you today are the daughters of immigrants, of factory workers, of former slaves. We’re the strivers and the seekers. Many of us are the first generation in our families to graduate from college. And our success is a testament to the persistence and power of the American dream. Of democracy.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“The war’s getting closer to the U.S. every day. It’s easy to think what happened in France could never happen here. But let’s not forget: on February twentieth last year, our own Madison Square Garden was filled with twenty thousand chanting, stomping, shouting Americans rallying in support of Nazi Germany.

That’s right—twenty thousand Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. Right here, in the heart of New York City. It’s a warning America’s not immune from the authoritarianism running rampant across Europe. And it’s a call to arms to those who believe the United States is the last, best hope for freedom and democracy.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall’…But, then again, don’t be in a big hurry to pick him up either.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy

“My husband died knowing he was loved and cared for. I’m proud of the woman my daughter’s become. My skills may not have earned money, but I wouldn’t trade them for all the ‘reputations’ in the world.”
― Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy