President Quotes

“Victory and defeat are each of the same price.”

“We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self - government.”

“To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.”

“There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance.”

“The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come.”

“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.”

“So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.”

“no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.”

“Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.”

“Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.”

“The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.”

“[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.”

“No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.”

“While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.”

“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure.”

“The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.”

“I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience.”

“The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached.”

“There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality.”

“I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.”

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.”

“There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.”

“No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.”

“I had rather have everybody on my side than be armed to the teeth.”

“We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.”