The quote database

Idleness and a strong will cannot go together, and procrastination is a total barrier to the acquisition of purposeful action.

To be able to do a thing, you must begin to do it, and keep on doing it until the thing is mastered.

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.

In short, we ought to do justice in a kindly spirit to all nations and require justice from them in return.

After becoming citizens they are entitled, under the Constitution and laws, to be placed on a perfect equality with native-born citizens, and in this character they should ever be kindly recognized.

It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.

Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people.

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.

By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one.

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

The burdens of government should as far as practicable be distributed justly and equally among all classes of our population.

Genius is free to announce its inventions and discoveries, and the hand is free to accomplish whatever the head conceives not incompatible with the rights of a fellow-being.

Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.

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.

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.

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

National honor is national property of the highest value.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

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

the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

The friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully.