All quotes

Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience

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

The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game.

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.

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

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

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again

When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue.

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.

It is over the lowest class of mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it operates to the worst effect.

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

The enormous expense of governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair.

Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.

I cannot believe that at this stage in our history, the American people would ever knowingly support purposeless vengeance.

The position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment.

Thus, even as the colonists embarked on a course to secure their own freedom and equality, they ensured perpetuation of the system that deprived a whole race of those rights.

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

One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go any where, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.