All quotes

We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil.

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.

I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.

We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.

The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness.

Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust.

Our mission is not punishment, but the rectification of wrong.

Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of our national character.

The Constitution expresses more than the conviction of the people that democratic processes must be preserved at all costs.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.