“I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.”

“With our eyes fixed on the future, but recognizing the realities of today, we will achieve our destiny to be as a shining city on a hill for all mankind to see.”

“I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees-you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.”

“Never let the things you can't do, stop you from doing what you can.”

“Self-defense is not only our right; it is our duty.”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

“Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares,And think perchance they'll sell; if not,The lustre of the better yet to showShall show the better.”

“The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.”

“In finance everything that is agreeable is unsoundand everything that is sound is disagreeable.”

“Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.”

“It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”

“The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.”

“There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family. But he can't make a living for them and his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people”

“If I were the treasury secretary or head of the Fed, you know, I would try to scare the hell the out of the private sector and say, you better save this because you're going down with the ship.”

“The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.”