The quote database

Our Constitution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist them.

The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union.

Now military governments, established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection.

The Constitution to which life was thus imparted contains within itself ample resources for its own preservation.

The ancient republics absorbed the individual in the state--prescribed his religion and controlled his activity.

The American system rests on the assertion of the equal right of every man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of conscience, to the culture and exercise of all his faculties.

The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised, under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man.

A race cannot be purified from without.

Let us then, here and now, recognize this force and resolve to make the most of it—not the boys less, but the girls more.

Nay, ’tis woman’s strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.

Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class,—it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity.

The case before us illustrates better than most that the judicial power is often difficult in its exercise.

A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.

As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.

Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else?

If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

There is no royal road to the control of the brain.

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

But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant.

We should hold our differing opinions in mutual respect, and, having submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot, should accept an adverse judgment with the same respect that we would have demanded of our opponents if the decision had been in our favor.

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