Calvin Coolidge Quotes

To the American People: Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world." ~ Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), American president. Presidential message (December 25, 1927).

I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.

The things I never say never get me into trouble.

Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither.

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.

We want wealth, but there are many other things we want very much more. Among them are peace, honor, charity, and idealism.

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.

Nobody will ever forget what I've accomplished.

Coincident with the right of individual property under the provisions of our Government is the right of individual property. . . . When once the right of the individual to liberty and equality is admitted, there is no escape from the conclusion that he alone is entitled to the rewards of his own industry. Any other conclusion would necessarily imply either privilege or servitude.

The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.

Look well to the hearthstone; therein all hope for America lies.

Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development of advertising.

The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country. Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil. America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility.

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind.

You know, I have found in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me.

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.

The budget idea, I may admit, is a sort of obsession with me. I believe in budgets. I want other people to believe in them. I have had a small one to run my own home; and besides that, I am the head of the organization that makes the greatest of all budgets, that of the United States Government. Do you wonder, then, that at times I dream of balance sheets and sinking funds?

If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it.

Money will not purchase character or good government.

Industry cannot flourish if labor languish.

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of the law for the virtues of men.

The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.

It is only when people can feel that their lives and the property which their industry has produced today will continue to be safe...that there can be...stability of value and...economic progress.

It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.

We do not need to import any foreign economic ideas or any foreign government. We had better stick to the American brand of government, the American brand of equality, and the American brand of wages. America had better stay American

There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. ... The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.

I have never been hurt by what I have not said.

It is all the more necessary under a system of free government that the people should be enlightened, that they should be correctly informed, than it is under an absolute government that they should be ignorant. Under a republic the institutions of learning, while bound by the constitution and laws, are in no way subservient to the government.

After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.

[May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world.

Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.

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.

I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.

It is very difficult to reconcile the American ideal of a sovereign people capable of owning and managing their own government with an inability to own and manage their own business.

Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.

Freedom is not only bought with a great price; it is maintained by unremitting effort.

What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost.

We insist on producing a farm surplus, but think the government should find a profitable market for it. We overindulge in speculation, but ask the government to prevent panics. Now the only way to hold the government entirely responsible for conditions is to give up our liberty for a dictatorship. If we continue the more reasonable practice of managing our own affairs we must bear the burdens of our own mistakes. A free people cannot shift their responsibility for them to the government. Self-government means self-reliance.

A lost article invariably shows up after you replace it.

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.

Everyone has an influence on public affairs if he will take the trouble to exert it.

There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.