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The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

Our diplomacy should be direct and frank, neither seeking to obtain more nor accepting less than is our due.

Next in importance to the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption.

Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

National honor is national property of the highest value.

Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on these duties without great anxiety for the result.

If errors have been committed they ought to be corrected; if the policy is sound it ought to be supported.

Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.

A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.

We will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.

I will give my all in your service thinking not of power, but of possibilities.

Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people?

ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law.

The most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism and sustained by venerated authority.

Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.

There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.

One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

In all public expenditures the most rigid economy should be resorted to, and, as one of its results, a public debt in time of peace be sedulously avoided.