They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.
The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
Duty is not collective; it is personal.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.
The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.
The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.
Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.
In the discharge of the duties of this office, there is one rule of action more important than all others. It consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you.
If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress.
Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.
Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.
