Daniel Webster Quotes

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.

I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

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

A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.

We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people

It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.

Where tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.

Wisdom begins at the end.

Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people.
January 1830

The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.

We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

Instruct the mothers of the French people.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

There is always room at the top.

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

Justice is the great interest of man on earth.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

The law: it has honored us; may we honor it.

The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly - in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly.

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread.

Power naturally and necessarily follows property.

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

The bible fits man for life and prepares him for death

The man is free who is protected from injury.

Now is the time when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen; the legislature is in session and no man's property is safe.

There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange.

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

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.

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.

Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!

When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country.

Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet.

Thank God, I also am an American!

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.

What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.

What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.

It is, Sir, as I have said, a small College, And yet, there are those who love it.

The States are nations.

All creeds are fallible and uncertain evidences of evangelical piety.

I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

Converse, converse, CONVERSE, with living men, face to face, mind to mind-that is one of the best sources of knowledge.

The farmers are the founders of civilization.

Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals.

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.