Coast Defenses

Famous quotes containing the words coast and/or defenses:

    What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?
    —For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children’s children who may perchance be really free.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)