Quotes by Presidents - Page 2

To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.
Abraham Lincoln
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.
Abraham Lincoln
Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?
Abraham Lincoln
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln
Achievement has no color
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln on Grant: "He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move.
Abraham Lincoln
With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase.
Abraham Lincoln
America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
John Quincy Adams
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end when I come to lay down the reins of Ewer I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at st have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham Lincoln
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
Herbert Hoover
The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.
Abraham Lincoln
I hope we shall ... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
Thomas Jefferson
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." &“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people”– –
Abraham Lincoln
The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little or have friends from whom they derive some succor, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses or in the houses of their friends. Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor
Thomas Jefferson
Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.
Thomas Jefferson
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
Thomas Jefferson
I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all Summer.
Ulysses S. Grant
I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but holding it a sound maxim, that it is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.
Abraham Lincoln
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln was asked by an aide about the church service he had attended. Lincoln responded that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent and the topic relevant. The aide said, “Then it was a good service?”Lincoln responded, “No.” The aide protested,“But, Mr. President, you said that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent, and that the topic was relevant.”“Yes,” replied Lincoln, “but he didn’t challenge us to do any great thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.
Abraham Lincoln
The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820]
Thomas Jefferson
I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.
Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Thomas Jefferson
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.
John Quincy Adams
May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to
Thomas Jefferson
Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by mself.
Herbert Hoover
Public opinion though often formed upon a wrong basis yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.
Abraham Lincoln
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
Thomas Jefferson
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.
Abraham Lincoln
I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
Abraham Lincoln
Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting
Thomas Jefferson
I am sure I'd have made a better all-around man if I hadn't lost so much time just making a living.
Herbert Hoover
Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung
Abraham Lincoln
Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.
Abraham Lincoln
My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.
Abraham Lincoln
Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.
Thomas Jefferson
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
Thomas Jefferson
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
Thomas Jefferson
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
Abraham Lincoln
Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.
Abraham Lincoln
All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.
Thomas Jefferson
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln
It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice
Thomas Jefferson
Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.
Herbert Hoover
Let no feeling of discouragement preyupon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.
Abraham Lincoln
I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
Ulysses S. Grant
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter usfrom the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Thomas Jefferson