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I felt it wasn’t appropriate for me to continue to refer to myself as an Ugly American when I hadn’t yet read the book by the same name, so I recently read The Ugly American
…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.
- Chapter 21: The Sum of Tiny Things (p. 267)
It is easy in a time of great events - of Sputniks and Explorers and ICBM’s and “dirty” and “clean” atomic weapons - to overlook one of the hard facts of history: a nation may lose its power and integrity slowly, in minute particles. We believe that a nuclear cataclysm is unlikely, but that our free life well may be lost in a succession of bits and fragments.
- Chapter 22: A Factual Epilogue (p. 271)
We have been offering the Asian nations the wrong kind of help. We have so lost sight of our own past that we are trying to sell guns and money alone, instead of remembering that it was the quest for the dignity of freedom that was responsible for our own way of life.
All over Asia we have found that the basic American ethic is revered and honored and imitated when possible. We must, while helping Asia toward self-sufficiency, show by example that America is still the America of freedom and hope and knowledge and law. If we succeed, we cannot lose the struggle.
- Chapter 22: A Factual Epilogue (pp. 284-285)
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