Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
One man with courage makes a majority.
There goes a man made by the Lord Almighty and not by his tailor.
Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.
Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.
Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.
I have always been afraid of banks.
The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.
The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.
Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges... which are employed altogether for their benefit.
Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission.
In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.
There is nothing that I shudder at more than the idea of a separation of the Union. Should such an event ever happen, which I fervently pray God to avert, from that date I view our liberty gone.
I've got big shoes to fill. This is my chance to do something. I have to seize the moment.
War is a blessing compared with national degradation.
Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.
