Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.
To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
I will utter what I believe today, if it should contradict all I said yesterday.
The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.
The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.
Though plunged in ills and exercised in care, Yet never let the noble mind despair.
What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.
What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.
Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world's progress.
The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.
Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress
Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.
Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. The keener the want the lustier the growth.
The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down; and the armed battalions of God march over him.
What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
Will the slave fight? If any man asks you, tell him No. But if anyone asks you will a Negro fight, tell him Yes!
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
My advice to a young man seeking deathless fame would be to espouse an unpopular cause and devote his life to it.
God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.
How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinion, who dares not give free scope to his opponent.
The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people
Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.
Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.
Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.
No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.
Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.
Baron Grimm declared that, as a rule, it was easy for little minds to attain splendid positions, because they devoted all their ability to the one object.
Government arrogates to itself that it alone forms men. Everybody knows that government never began anything. It is the whole world that thinks and governs.