"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:
“If you would be a leader of men you must lead your own generation, not the next. Your playing must be good now, while the play is on the boards and the audience in the seats.... It will not get you the repute of a good actor to have excellencies discovered in you afterwards.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)