President Quotes

“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”

“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”

“Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.”

“He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.”

“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”

“To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.”

“Our business is to have great credit and to use it little.”

“With all the imperfections of our present government, it is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.”

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.”

“Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.”

“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

“I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, 'A free field and no favor.'”

“The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand, and to know that in performing it we are serving our country.”

“Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.”

“There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.”

“The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women who do the daily workis the underlying necessity of all prosperity.... There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented.”

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”

“To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.”

“Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.”

“The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For...things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.”

“We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world.”

“High society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do.”

“I'm a vague, conjunctured personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.”

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

“I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.”