"Leader of The Free World"
The "Leader of the Free World" is a colloquialism, first used during the Cold War, to describe either the United States or the President of the United States. The term, when used in this context, suggests that the United States is the principal democratic superpower, and the U.S. President is, by extension, the leader of the world's democratic states, i.e. the "Free World". The phrase had its origin in the late 1940s, and has become more widely used since the early 1950s. It was heavily referenced in American foreign policy up until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, and has since fallen out of use, in part due to its usage in anti-American rhetoric.
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Famous quotes containing the words leader, free and/or world:
“In Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)