The quote database

our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent methods without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body.

The man who has come to regard the ballot box as a juggler's hat has renounced his allegiance.

They will presently themselves be compelled to appeal to the law for protection, and those who would use the law as a defense must not deny that use of it to others.

Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil.

The Government can not successfully insure prosperity or fix prices by legislative fiat.

The whole theory of our institutions is based on the liberty and independence of the individual.

Thus the Analytical Engine will possess a library of its own. Every set of cards once made will at any future time reproduce the calculations for which it was first arranged.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

As the racial distinction of humanity lies in its social relation, so we find the distinctive gains and losses of humanity to lie also in its social relation. We are more affected by our relation to each other than by our physical environment.

The basic condition of human life is union; the organic social relation, the interchange of functional service, wherein the individual is most advantaged, not by his own exertions for his own goods, but by the exchange of his exertions with the exertions of others for goods produced by them together.

Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken.

The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life.

The Constitution defines the functions and powers of the executive as clearly as those of either of the other two departments of the Government, and he must answer for the just exercise of the discretion it permits and the performance of the duties it imposes.

The defining character of American constitutional government is its constant tension between security and liberty, serving both by partial helpings of each.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages.

It decrees that we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex

The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man.

When the Government acts to take away the fundamental right of citizenship, the safeguards of the Constitution should be examined with special diligence.