Gilbert MacWhite Quotes in The Ugly American
[MacWhite] recognized that he did not know enough about the Asian personality and the way it played politics. There was a strain of coldness, an element of finality, about the whole thing he had never encountered before. Politics in Asia were played for total stakes. He also recognized that he could learn from the experience of others.
“It doesn’t have a thing to do with the quality of the French fighting, or with your Legionnaires […] It’s just that the Communists are fighting by a different rule book. And, like a damn fool, it’s taken me almost a month to remember that I once read it. When I was in Korea, I picked up a book by Mao Tse-tung. Now, Monet, don’t kid yourself about this. Mao is one hell of a bright guy. I hate what he stands for, but he does have a kind of genius.”
“When I was asked to read palms at the Philippine Ambassador’s dinner, it was a God-given opportunity. All of the Sarkhanese brass except the King were present. And then that knucklehead of an assistant of yours [Swift], instead of helping me, started laughing at me and trying to make a fool out of me. If he had an ounce of brains, he would have noticed how serious the Sarkhanese were. And if those fools in the State Department had briefed him properly, he would have known all about palmistry and astrology before he came here.”
“The Russians will win the world by their successes in a multitude of tiny battles. Many of these will be fought around conference tables in the rice fields of Asia, at village meetings, in schools; but mainly they will take place in the minds of men. Only occasionally will the battles be violent; but the sum of these tiny battles will decide whether our way of life is to perish or exists.”
The little things we do must be moral acts and they must be done in the real interest of the peoples whose friendship we need—not just in the interest of propaganda. […] To the extent that our foreign policy is humane and reasonable, it will be successful. To the extent that it is imperialistic and grandiose, it will fail.
Gilbert MacWhite Quotes in The Ugly American
[MacWhite] recognized that he did not know enough about the Asian personality and the way it played politics. There was a strain of coldness, an element of finality, about the whole thing he had never encountered before. Politics in Asia were played for total stakes. He also recognized that he could learn from the experience of others.
“It doesn’t have a thing to do with the quality of the French fighting, or with your Legionnaires […] It’s just that the Communists are fighting by a different rule book. And, like a damn fool, it’s taken me almost a month to remember that I once read it. When I was in Korea, I picked up a book by Mao Tse-tung. Now, Monet, don’t kid yourself about this. Mao is one hell of a bright guy. I hate what he stands for, but he does have a kind of genius.”
“When I was asked to read palms at the Philippine Ambassador’s dinner, it was a God-given opportunity. All of the Sarkhanese brass except the King were present. And then that knucklehead of an assistant of yours [Swift], instead of helping me, started laughing at me and trying to make a fool out of me. If he had an ounce of brains, he would have noticed how serious the Sarkhanese were. And if those fools in the State Department had briefed him properly, he would have known all about palmistry and astrology before he came here.”
“The Russians will win the world by their successes in a multitude of tiny battles. Many of these will be fought around conference tables in the rice fields of Asia, at village meetings, in schools; but mainly they will take place in the minds of men. Only occasionally will the battles be violent; but the sum of these tiny battles will decide whether our way of life is to perish or exists.”
The little things we do must be moral acts and they must be done in the real interest of the peoples whose friendship we need—not just in the interest of propaganda. […] To the extent that our foreign policy is humane and reasonable, it will be successful. To the extent that it is imperialistic and grandiose, it will fail.
