I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame.
The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.
The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.
Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize Man still is bound to rescue or maintain; That nature’s God commands the slave to rise, And on the oppressor’s head to break the chain. Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, Till not a slave shall on this earth by found.
America is a friend of freedom everywhere, but a custodian only of our own.
So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.
The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.
I want the seals of power and place, the ensigns of command, charged by the people’s unbought grace, to rule my native land. Nor crown, nor scepter would I ask but from my country’s will, by day, by night, to ply the task her cup of bliss to fill.
About one-half of the members of Congress are seekers for office at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one-half have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives.
There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.
The rules are simple and easily understood by anyone who has once seen the game, but to the totally uninitiated they appear to be hopelessly unintelligible.
Now to what higher object, to what greater character, can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready at command, to assist the feeble and friendless, to discountenance the haughty and lawless, to procure redress to wrongs, the advancement of rights, to assert and maintain liberty and virtue to discourage and abolish tyranny and vice.
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.
A government of laws, and not of men.
We hear very often declarations on the demoralizing tendency of war, but as much as I hate war, I cannot be of the opinion that frequent wars are so corrupting to human nature as long peaces.
But I am bold to say there is not a fact nor a reason stated in it, which had not been frequently urged in Congress. The temper and wishes of the people supplied every thing at that time; and the phrases, suitable for an emigrant from Newgate, or one who had chiefly associated with such company, such as, “The Royal Brute of England,” “The blood upon his soul,” and a few others of equal delicacy, had as much weight with the people as his arguments.
The national defense must be provided for as well as the support of Government; but both should be accomplished as much as possible by immediate taxes, and as little as possible by loans.
He wrote as a young man that God’s noblest gift was the gift of an inquiring mind.
Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.
Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.