The quote database

There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people.

We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.

There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path.

Great nations like great men must keep their word.

A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on men's souls.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil.

I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.

We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations.

it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian.

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.

A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.

I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it.