Daniel Webster Quotes
There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters
The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest
The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.
Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.
On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.
Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.
The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.
Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.
Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.
How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.
The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
No power but Congress can declare war, but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?
Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.
Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.
Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from...the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.
If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.
Our profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it; it is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money catching.
It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.
If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.
The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.
