Quotes by Presidents - Page 2

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Thomas Jefferson

They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

Thomas Jefferson

Prosperity is just around the corner.

Herbert Hoover

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

Thomas Jefferson

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Thomas Jefferson

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.

Thomas Jefferson

I do not take a single newspaper nor read one a month and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Thomas Jefferson

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,[Abraham Lincoln]April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. PierceSpringfield, Ill.

Abraham Lincoln

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

Herbert Hoover

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.

Abraham Lincoln

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

Thomas Jefferson

War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.

Thomas Jefferson

The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that, by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under the burden of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey's end.

Thomas Jefferson

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Thomas Jefferson

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln

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

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Abraham Lincoln

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

Thomas Jefferson

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

Thomas Jefferson

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

Abraham Lincoln

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

Abraham Lincoln

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Abraham Lincoln

Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.

Thomas Jefferson

I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Abraham Lincoln

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...

Thomas Jefferson

If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few: by resignation none.

Thomas Jefferson

I never did or countenanced in public life a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith having never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.

Thomas Jefferson

All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.

Abraham Lincoln

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

John Quincy Adams

I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every friend on earth I shall have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside me.

Abraham Lincoln

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.

Thomas Jefferson

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Thomas Jefferson

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

Thomas Jefferson

I find that the harder I work , the more luck I seem to have.

Thomas Jefferson

I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

Abraham Lincoln

I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.

Thomas Jefferson

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Thomas Jefferson

Previous 1 2