William McKinley

Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, "Buy where you can buy the cheapest".... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: "Buy where you can pay the easiest." And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.

Speech in Boston, MA (Oct. 4, 1892) William McKinley Papers, Library of Congress. , 1892

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.

First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1897) , 1897

Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.

Speech delivered at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (September 5, 1901). , 1901

Illiteracy must be banished from the land if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world which, under Providence, we ought to achieve.

First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1897). , 1897

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.

Speech delivered at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (September 5, 1901). , 1901