Quote collection
459 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand--that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe."
"We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act."
"To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life."
"No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States."
"The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties."
"The right is more precious than peace."
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world."
"Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a practical document for the use of practical men. It is not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; it is not a theory of government but a program of action."
"It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation."
"The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For... things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex."
"I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it."
"The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history."
"To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking."
"Let it be your pride to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are."
"No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise."
"To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest."
"A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits."
"There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect."
"What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence."
"I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience."