Quotes by Presidents - Page 3

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
This struggle and scramble for office for a way to live without work will finally test the strength of our institutions.
Abraham Lincoln
You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve protect and defend" it.
Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible.
Abraham Lincoln
When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through it is best to make up our minds to meet it with firmness and accommodate everything to it in the best way practical. This lessons the evil while fretting and fuming only serve to increase your own torments.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a slow walker but I never walk back.
Abraham Lincoln
Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere or to do anything never to turn back or to stop until the thing intended was accomplished.
Ulysses S. Grant
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Thomas Jefferson
I do not take a single newspaper nor read one a month and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
Thomas Jefferson
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.
F. D. Roosevelt
The sun - my almighty physician.
Thomas Jefferson
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.
Abraham Lincoln
All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.
Abraham Lincoln
I never did or countenanced in public life a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith having never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
Thomas Jefferson
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell it is simply purgatory.
Abraham Lincoln
The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
F. D. Roosevelt
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
Do not worry eat three square meals a day say your prayers be courteous to your creditors keep your digestion good exercise go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy but my friend these I reckon will give you a good life.
Abraham Lincoln
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
Ulysses S. Grant
If the law is upheld only by government officials then all law is at an end.
Herbert Hoover
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
Thomas Jefferson
I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
Ulysses S. Grant
The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Thomas Jefferson
The sword of the law should never fall but on those whose guilt is so apparent as to be pronounced by their friends as well as foes.
Thomas Jefferson
Of all calamities this is the greatest.
Thomas Jefferson
I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.
Thomas Jefferson
With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds.
Abraham Lincoln
I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Abraham Lincoln
Most folk are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not being pained in body nor troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us but is always the result of a good conscience good health occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.
Ulysses S. Grant
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
A house divided against itself cannot stand - I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.
Abraham Lincoln
The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.
Abraham Lincoln
That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
Abraham Lincoln
Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?
Abraham Lincoln
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.
Thomas Jefferson
Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.
Abraham Lincoln
While the people retain their virtue and vigilence no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
Abraham Lincoln
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Without the assistance of the Divine Being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.
Abraham Lincoln
We trust sir that God is on our side. It is more important to know that we are on God's side.
Abraham Lincoln
We trust Sir that God is on our side. "It is more important to know that we are on God's side."
Abraham Lincoln
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
Herbert Hoover
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham Lincoln
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end when I come to lay down the reins of Ewer I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at st have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham Lincoln
France freed from that monster Bonaparte must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one and the first choice of all not under those ties.
Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
My country ... gave me schooling independence of action and opportunity for service. ... I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
Herbert Hoover
Force is all-conquering but its victories are short-lived.
Abraham Lincoln
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
F. D. Roosevelt