All quotes

While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government.

Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.

To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life.

Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people.

"Inherent differences" between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity.

neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature -- equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities

They meant that public officers should owe their whole service to the Government and to the people.

he should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods.

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character.

Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.

In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education.

I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.

The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.

No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.