Quotes by Presidents

I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
Lincoln on Grant: "He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move.
Abraham Lincoln
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
Herbert Hoover
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
Abraham Lincoln
How much pain they have cost us the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
Labor disgraces no man unfortunately you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
Ulysses S. Grant
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Abraham Lincoln
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
Thomas Jefferson
Prosperity is just around the corner.
Herbert Hoover
War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
Thomas Jefferson
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
Thomas Jefferson
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself as public property.
Thomas Jefferson
Seriously I do not think I am fit for the presidency.
Abraham Lincoln
I feel like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. To the man who asked how he liked it he said: 'If it wasn't for the honour of the thing I'd rather walk.'
Abraham Lincoln
I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every friend on earth I shall have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside me.
Abraham Lincoln
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
Abraham Lincoln
I like the dreams for the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
With high hope for the future no prediction is ventured.
Abraham Lincoln
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase.
Abraham Lincoln
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
John Quincy Adams
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Peace commerce and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none.
Thomas Jefferson
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Thomas Jefferson
For God's sake let us freely hear both sides!
Thomas Jefferson
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate we cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
Abraham Lincoln
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
Abraham Lincoln
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
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
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
Thomas Jefferson
The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
Thomas Jefferson
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
This country with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
Abraham Lincoln
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Thomas Jefferson
I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all Summer.
Ulysses S. Grant
A republican government is slow to move yet when once in motion its momentum becomes irresistible.
Thomas Jefferson
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is but it does not admit of holidays.
Abraham Lincoln
When I decided to go into politics I weighed the cost: I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when the virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it.
Herbert Hoover
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg and he is trying to run away it is best to let him run.
Abraham Lincoln
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
Important principles may and must be flexible.
Abraham Lincoln
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson
Freedom of conscience of education of speech of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.
F. D. Roosevelt
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
I have been driven many times to 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 the day.
Abraham Lincoln
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
Thomas Jefferson
Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!
John Quincy Adams
If they do kill me I shall never die another death.
Abraham Lincoln
If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few by resignation none.
Thomas Jefferson
Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by mself.
Herbert Hoover
Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meannesses for the public good.
Abraham Lincoln