Isolationism is not leadership.

Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.

— Margaret MacMillan

Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy.

— Spiro T. Agnew

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

— John Quincy Adams

“The consensus that had sustained our postwar foreign policy had evaporated. The men and women who had sustained our international commitments and achievements were…

— Henry Kissinger

Perfectionism, no less than isolationism or imperialism or power politics, may obstruct the paths to international peace. Let us not forget that the retreat…

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's…

— W. Averell Harriman

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

— Stephen Colbert

“One real meeting is much better than a thousand internet or social media words.”

— Stephen Richards

[Alex Haley] objective was to illustrate that the racial separatism of the N.O.I. was a kind of pathological or a kind of - it…

— Manning Marable

Isolationism is over. It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.

— Ralph Steadman

The challenge is whether China as a rising country, the United States as the superpower, can develop a cooperative relationship in this period before…

— Henry A. Kissinger

In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics…

— James Ellroy

One must not allow oneself to skid down to isolationism and unbridled economic egoism. ... The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into…

— Vladimir Putin

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, isolationism was an important, even dominant strand in U.S. politics. After the Second World War, this strand disappeared,…

— Anne Applebaum

“He is in many ways quite a right-wing isolationist. It's because some people are naïve enough to confuse this with anti-imperialism that they think…

— Christopher Hitchens