Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.
I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions.
Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.
History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.
Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.
Whatever I may believe in theology, I do not believe in the doctrine of vicarious atonement in politics.
The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe-that the world is a cosmos and a chaos.
I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct.
Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe,--human or divine. A law is not law without coercion behind it.
In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the Church, counted its martyrs by thousands.
If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.
Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.
..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.
But for we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare... are to be found portrayed in it.
History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires.
Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.
When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope to be in a better temper to legislate.
The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.
A noble life crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech.
[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.
I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil.
For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do every thing.
Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear, like owls and bats, before the light of day.
Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.
To all our means of culture is added the powerful incentive to personal ambition, no post of honor is so high but the poorest may hope to reach it.
I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.
Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.
At present, the most valuable gift which can be bestowed upon women is something to do which they can do well and worthily, and thereby maintain themselves.
Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification.
The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others.
When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose.
Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.
Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.
[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.
It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.
We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.
In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.
Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis. Conservatives have their place in the piping times of peace; but in emergencies only rugged issue men amount to much.
If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man, - it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.
I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.
Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.
[It is possible] that the race of red men ... will, before many generations, be remembered only as a strange, weird, dream-like specter, which has passed once before the eyes of men, but had departed forever.
You and I are now nearly in middle age, and have not yet become soured and shrivelled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.