All quotes

Our diplomacy should be direct and frank, neither seeking to obtain more nor accepting less than is our due.

National honor is national property of the highest value.

If errors have been committed they ought to be corrected; if the policy is sound it ought to be supported.

I will give my all in your service thinking not of power, but of possibilities.

We will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.

Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people?

ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law.

The most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism and sustained by venerated authority.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

In all public expenditures the most rigid economy should be resorted to, and, as one of its results, a public debt in time of peace be sedulously avoided.

In regard to foreign nations, the groundwork of my policy will be justice on our part to all, submitting to injustice from none.

In this the Endowments of Men are so employed, that the Friend and the Governor are united in one, and oppressive Customs come to an End.

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The observed worker should be made to realize the purpose and importance of the measurement.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

As members of the minority party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.

Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which colored women might be truthfully charged.

With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope.

The beauty of our system of government consists, and its safety and durability must consist, in avoiding mutual collisions and encroachments and in the regular separate action of all, while each is revolving in its own distinct orbit.

No one may become a real leader in any walk of life without practicing the habit of doing more work and better work than that for which he is paid.