QUOTATIONS ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Not
in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example
of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity. --George Bancroft
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to
hold the memory of a wrong. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
He is one of those giant figures, of whom there are very few in history, who lose
their nationality in death. --David Lloyd George
Oh, wise physician of a wasted land! --Hermann Hagedorn
Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all. --Vachel Lindsay
Mute though his lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is his voice,
but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the world, and the sons of bondage
listen with joy. --Matthew Simpson
The important
thing today is not what we say of Lincoln but what Lincoln would say of us if
he were here in this hour and could note the drift and tendency in American life
and American politics. --Stephen Samuel Wise
Abraham
Lincoln needs no marble shaft to perpetuate his name; his words are the
most enduring monument, and will forever live in the hearts of the people. --Osborn H. Oldroyd
If you look at his portraits they always
give you an indelible impression of his great height. So does his life.
Height of purpose, height of ideal, height of character, height of intelligence. --David Lloyd George
Lincoln was not a type. He stands
alone - no ancestors, no fellows, no successors. --Robert G. Ingersoll
His grave a nation's heart shall be,
His monument a people free!
--Caroline Atherton Mason
A faith like Lincoln's would
transform the world! --James Oppenheim
He showed
that fame may be won and what services be rendered by a plain son of the people
unaided by any gifts of fortune. --James Bryce
In
him was vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness. --Phillips Brooks
Humble birth did not retard his genius,
nor high place corrupt his soul. --Cass Gilbert
He
was one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power, and whose
spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his triumphs were multiplied. --James
A. Garfield
God and Nature together shaped him to lead
in the van,
In the stress of her wildest weather when the Nation needed a
Man.
--Margaret E. Sangster
His heart and his brain
were utterly foreign to all vindictiveness or personal bitterness. He declared
himself hotly and strongly against wrong causes, but never against men. --London Spectator
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
--John Greenleaf Whittier
A statesman of the school of sound common sense, and a philanthropist of the most
practical type, a patriot without a superior - his monument is a country preserved. --C.S. Harrington
Lincoln had faith in time, and time has
justified his faith. --Benjamin Harrison
Nor all
America can claim him now:
Forevermore he is Mankind's and God's.
--Reginald
Wright Kauffman
He raised his hands, not to strike, but
in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war.
He is the gentlest memory of our world. --Robert G. Ingersoll
Look on this cast, and know the hand
That bore a nation in its hold;
From this mute witness understand
What Lincoln was - how large of mould.
--E.C. Stedman
He was a common man expanded into giant
proportions; well acquainted with the people, he placed his hand on the beating
pulse of the nation, judged of its disease and was ready with a remedy. --Joshua Speed
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve
-
To send the keen axe to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way to the
feet of God,
The eyes of conscience testing every stroke.
--Edwin Markham
His love shone as impartial as the sun. --Maurice Thompson
Abraham Lincoln is not dead. Emancipated from the thraldom of
time, he has stepped beyond the trammels of birth, and race, and state.
He lives in an epic all his own; in ever widening spiritual leadership; in the
splendor of realized ideals; in inspiration to good citizenship and in multiplying
memorials in literature and art, in progress and reform, in patriotism and philanthropy,
in education and humanitarianism. --John Wesley Hill
A martyr to the cause of man,
His blood is freedom's eucharist,
And in
the world's great hero list
His name shall lead the van.
--Charles G. Halpin
To him was given the duty and responsibility of making that great classic
of liberty, the Declaration of Independence, no longer an empty promise, but a
glorious fulfillment. --William McKinley
A type that
nature wills to plan
But once in all a people's years.
--E.C. Stedman
Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the
Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation,
but for all time, because he was a man among men. --Theodore Roosevelt
It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy
brows and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if in spite of
all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty
where no man looked on. --Woodrow Wilson
Hail, Lincoln!
As the swift years lengthen
Still more majestic grows thy fame.
--Nathan
Haskell Dole
This statesman was no conqueror, but his
superiority consisted in his moral conquest; this President vanquished no foreign
people, and his superiority lay in his self-constraint; this excellent judge of
human nature cast a spell over nobody, yet is more fascinating than the shining
victors of history. --Emil Ludwig
The qualities which
caused him to be acclaimed the leader, he possessed when he was teaching school,
and splitting rails, and reading law in a judge's musty office. From the
beginning he was a man among men who always upheld the right, advocated justice
for the oppressed, and a square deal for all. --Frank Dorrance Hopley
Meseems I feel his presence. Is he dead?
Death is a word.
He lives and grander grows.
--Maurice Thompson
QUOTATIONS ABOUT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Let him who looks for a monument to Washington look around the United States.
Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your
prodigious growth are a monument to him. --Louis Kossuth
If I were to characterize George Washington's feelings toward his country,
I should be less inclined than most people to stress what is called Washington's
love of his country. What impresses me as far more important is what
I should call Washington's respect for his country. --Randolph G.
Adams
Then honor to the day that gave him birth,
For
it is also Freedom's natal day.
--Arthur J. Burdick
George Washington is one of the beacons placed at intervals along the highroad
of history. --Orestes Ferrara
More than all, and
above all, Washington was master of himself. --Charles Francis Adams
His life was a hymn in praise of honor, uprightness, and patriotism. --Orestes Ferrara
Washington's is the mightiest name of
earth - long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in
moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be.
To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible.
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked
deathless splendor leave it shining on. --Abraham Lincoln
The prevailin' weakness of most public men is to Slop Over!.... G. Washington
never slopt over. --Artemus Ward
He shaped and molded
that office to the contours of his own heroic stature. --W.J. Cameron
Eternity alone can reveal to the human race its debt of gratitude to
the peerless and immortal name of Washington. --James A. Garfield
Blot out from the page of history the names of all the great actors
of his time in the drama of nations, and preserve the name of Washington, and
the century would be renowned. --Chauncey M. Depew
This was the man God gave us when the hour
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty
begun.
--John Hall Ingham
Washington's appointments,
when president, were made with a view to gather all the talent of the country
in support of the national government; and he bore many things which were personally
disagreeable in an endeavor to do this. --Paul Leicester Ford
Well hath he been called one of the architects of civilization. --Newell Dwight Hillis
The flower imperishable of this
valiant age, -
A true American!
--Clinton Scollard
George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the previous administration
for his troubles. --Author Unknown
He guided the passions of
others, because he was master of his own. --Ebenezer Grant Marsh
One of the greatest captains of the age. --Benjamin Franklin
Great knightly soul who came in time to serve his country's need. --Margaret E. Sangster
I bet after seeing us, George Washington
would sue us for calling him "father." --Will Rogers
Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name
shall be lost in the vortex of revolution. --Napoleon I
The great citizen, the first-born son of the New World. --Simón
Bolívar
May it please Heaven that his example shall
continue to serve as a beacon to our Republics in their darkest moments of doubt
and adversity. --Jorge Ubico
QUOTATIONS BY U.S. PRESIDENTS
I hope I shall possess firmness
and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles,
the character of an honest man. --George Washington
In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing
but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence. --George Washington
I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of
the world. --George Washington
My movements to the chair of
government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is
going to the place of his execution. --George Washington, letter, 1789
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. --Thomas Jefferson
History,
in general, only informs us what bad government is. --Thomas Jefferson
Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. --Thomas Jefferson
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me. --Thomas Jefferson
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth
can stand by itself. --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more
I have of it. --Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is
its natural manure. --Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have
cost us, the evils which have never happened. --Thomas Jefferson
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of
life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine. --Thomas Jefferson
The most valuable of all talents is that of never
using two words when one will do. --Thomas Jefferson
The man
who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but
newspapers. --Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not
being pained in body or troubled in mind. --Thomas Jefferson
We never repent of having eaten too little. --Thomas Jefferson
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins
in his conduct. --Thomas Jefferson
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom
of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent
and sudden usurpations. --James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. --James Madison
The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but a sort of
mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be foul. --John Quincy Adams
It's a damn
poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. --Andrew Jackson
If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in
leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country. --James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln, 1861
A capacity,
and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by
others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems.
And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing
the unsolved ones. --Abraham Lincoln
Discourage litigation.
Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them
how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of
time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good
man. There will still be business enough. --Abraham Lincoln
I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at
least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find
one who cannot. --Abraham Lincoln
I believe it is an established
maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true
or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does
not justify or excuse him. --Abraham Lincoln
I have been driven
many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else
to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that
day. --Abraham Lincoln
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of
liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all
men are created free and equal. --Abraham Lincoln
Labor is
prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the
superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. --Abraham
Lincoln
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith,
let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. --Abraham Lincoln
There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have
its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be
the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching
from the finite to the infinite. --Abraham Lincoln
Those who
deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God,
can not long retain it. --Abraham Lincoln
We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching
from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched,
as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --Abraham Lincoln
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried,
against the new and untried? --Abraham Lincoln
Whenever I hear
any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. --Abraham Lincoln
With malice toward none, with charity for all,
with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on
to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with
all nations. --Abraham Lincoln
I have never advocated war except
as a means of peace. --Ulysses S. Grant
Labor disgraces no
man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor. --Ulysses
S. Grant
The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves. --James A. Garfield
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative
positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization
were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours. --Grover Cleveland,
1905
It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully,
for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of
an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship;
but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully
supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will
reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted. --Theodore
Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message
A man who has never gone to school
may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal
the whole railroad. --Theodore Roosevelt
To waste,
to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using
it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of
our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them
amplified and developed. --Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3
December 1907
Order without liberty and liberty without order are
equally destructive. --Theodore Roosevelt
The best leader is
the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint
enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. --Theodore Roosevelt
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless
we make it a good place for all of us to live in. --Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. --Theodore
Roosevelt
I would never read a book if it were possible for me to
talk half an hour with the man who wrote it. --Woodrow Wilson
The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences
in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created
by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not
been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but
of a history. --Woodrow Wilson
The American Revolution
was a beginning, not a consummation. --Woodrow Wilson
I not
only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. --Woodrow
Wilson
A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly
sits. --Woodrow Wilson
The government, which was designed for
the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special
interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. --Woodrow Wilson
Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control
a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose. --Woodrow Wilson
We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. --Calvin Coolidge
Patriotism is easy to understand in America - it
means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country. --Calvin
Coolidge
If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be
sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you. --Calvin Coolidge
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. --Calvin Coolidge
Older men declare war. But it is the youth
that must fight and die. --Herbert Hoover
Blessed are the young,
for they shall inherit the national debt. --Herbert Hoover, attributed
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is an unfortunate human failing that a
full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. --Franklin
D. Roosevelt
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs
who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. --Franklin D. Roosevelt,
radio speech, 26 October 1939
It is amazing what you can accomplish
if you do not care who gets the credit. --Harry S. Truman
A
pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is
one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. --Harry Truman
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand
miles from the corn field. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done
because he wants to do it. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. --Dwight D.
Eisenhower
Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger
and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms
is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of
life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging
on a cross of iron. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper
Editors, 16 April 1953
The problem in defense is how far
you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are going to have peace even
if we have to fight for it. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
Neither
a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the
train of the future to run over him. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionists and rebels
- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. --Dwight D. Eisenhower,
address, Columbia University, 31 May 1954
Freedom has
its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily
earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will
wither and die. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
What counts
is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight
in the dog. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
You do not lead by hitting
people over the head. That's assault, not leadership. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses
both. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, first inaugural address, 20 January 1953
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed,
given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. --Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will
put an end to mankind. --John F. Kennedy, 1961
War will exist
until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation
and prestige that the warrior does today. --John F. Kennedy
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. --John F. Kennedy
When written in Chinese the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents
opportunity. --John F. Kennedy, address, 12 April 1959
I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life
is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. --John F. Kennedy
The
courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final
moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. --John F. Kennedy
Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy
of growth. --John F. Kennedy
We are inclined that if we watch
a football game or baseball game, we have taken part in it. --John F. Kennedy,
1961
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget
that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. --John F. Kennedy
Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying
those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is
paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. --John F.
Kennedy
Man is still the most extraordinary computer
of all. --John F. Kennedy
Too often we... enjoy the
comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. --John F. Kennedy
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife
happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second,
let her have it. --Lyndon B. Johnson
Freedom is not
enough. --Lyndon B. Johnson
If one morning I walked on top
of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read:
"President Can't Swim." --Lyndon B. Johnson
I know
I am getting better at golf because I'm hitting fewer spectators. --Gerald
Ford
I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during
my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose. --Gerald
Ford
America did not invent human rights. In a very
real sense... human rights invented America. --Jimmy Carter
I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine
might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this
world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really
are all human beings here on this earth together. --Ronald Reagan, 1985
The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but
doesn't have to take the civil service examination. --Ronald Reagan
The days a man spends fishing or spends hunting should not be deducted from
the time that he's on earth. In other words, if I fish today, that should
be added to the amount of time I get to live. That's the way I look at recreation.
That's why I'll be a big conservation, environmental President, because I plan
to fish and hunt as much as I possibly can. --George Bush, quoted in Los
Angeles Times, 30 December 1988
We cannot blame the schools
alone for the dismal decline in SAT verbal scores. When our kids come home
from school do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube, watching
music videos? Parents, don't make the mistake of thinking your kid only
learns between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. --George Bush
There
is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. --William J. Clinton
The real differences around the world today
are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and
Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those
who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling
to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to
clench their fists. --William J. Clinton, 1997
QUOTATIONS ABOUT THE U.S. PRESIDENCY
George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the previous administration
for his troubles. --Author Unknown
I think this is the most
extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered
together at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson
dined here alone. --John F. Kennedy, to his Nobel Prize-winning guests
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries
him into it. --Thomas Jefferson, letter, 1796
Leadership
is action, not position. --Donald H. McGannon
A leader leads
by example, whether he intends to or not. --Author Unknown
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of
the odds against them. --Robert Jarvik
Nothing so conclusively
proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead
himself. --Thomas J. Watson
A leader is a dealer in hope. --Napoleon Bonaparte
Leaders don't create followers, they create
more leaders. --Tom Peters
I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle; but today it means
getting along with people. --Indira Gandhi
Ohio claims
they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the
United States, they have not had one since Lincoln. --Will Rogers
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you. --Abraham Lincoln
The presidency is now a cross between
a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches
the first prize. --Saul Bellow
When I was a boy I was told
that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. --Clarence
Darrow
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office
like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is... the ultimate
indignity to the democratic process. --Adlai Stevenson, speech, Democratic
National Convention, 18 August 1956
Any American who
is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified
from ever doing so. --Gore Vidal
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