Panama Canal Quotes

I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I would have presented a dignified state paper to Congress and the debates on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on the Canal does also.

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

When President Teddy Roosevelt posed for the cameras astride a massive steam shovel during construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, it was more than a simple photo op. Though the scene was clearly staged, it symbolized a crucial moment in American history.

The Panama railroad had been built by Americans over a half century ago, with appalling loss of life

The taxes derived from distilled and malt liquors and from tobacco, as reported by the United States Commissioner, in 1912 amounted to $290,250,000. This was considerably more than the entire congressional appropriations for the army and navy; and in sixteen months these taxes pour into the treasury more than the estimated cost of the Panama Canal.

It has been said that, in our present state of unpreparedness, a trans-isthmian canal will be a military disaster to the United States, and especially to the Pacific coast. When the canal is finished the Atlantic seaboard will be neither more nor less exposed than it now is; it will merely share with the country at large the increased danger of foreign complications with inadequate means to meet them. The danger of the Pacific coast will be greater by so much as the way between it and Europe is shortened through a passage which the stronger maritime power can control. The danger lies not merely in the greater facility for dispatching a hostile squadron from Europe, but also in the fact that a more powerful fleet than formerly can be maintained on that coast by a European power

Panamanians live in a chronic state of insurrection and violence.

I have read your proposed speech. Your argument is like that of the man who is accused of seduction and defends himself by explaining that he has committed rape.

In all the world there is not, perhaps, now concentrated in any single spot so much swindling and villainy, so much foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical abomination as in the scene of this far-famed undertaking of nineteenth-century engineering

We should keep the Panama Canal because we stole it fair and square.

How beautiful it would be if the Isthmus of Panama should come to be to us what the Isthmus of Corinth was to the Greeks! May God grant that some day we may have the happiness of installing there an august congress of the representatives of the republics, kingdoms and empires, to discuss and study the high interests of peace and war with nations of other three parts of the world!

I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.

Who would have ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his immediate community if he had only half committed himself? The great secret of his career was that he has flung his whole life with all the determination and energy he could muster.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things.

A canal under American control or no canal.

For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue. The stronghold of these demands lies west of the Alleghenies.

I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.

We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours.

The invasion of Panama, what was that? The U.S. killed, according to the Panamanians, 3,000 civilians. Maybe they're right. We don't investigate our own crimes, so nobody knows.

A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished.

Regarding the Panama Canal Treaty negotiations, they will find us standing up or dead, but never on our knees; NEVER!

Japan will oppose any attempt at international control of Manchuria. It does not mean that we defy you, because Manchuria belongs to us by right …Read your history. We recovered Manchuria from Russia. We made it what it is today …. We look into the gloom of the future and can see no certain gleam of light before us … Would the American people agree to such control of the Panama Canal Zone; would the British permit it over Egypt?

[It is the] duty of the United States to assert and maintain such supervision and authority over any inter-oceanic canal across the isthmus that connects North and South America as will protect our national interest.

Here is Theodore Roosevelt with all his faults and with all his strengths - the devoted family man, the passionate game hunter, the astute politician, the frustrated warrior. This is a deeply moving account of the last years of a very great man.

I remember standing in the crow's nest as we entered the misty Panama Canal, and the strange sensation as the 4,000-ton ship rose higher and higher inside the lock.