It is simple to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and private gain. It is more comfortable to sit content in the easy approval of friends and of neighbours than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs. It is easier to fall in step with the slogans of others than to march to the beat of the internal drummer - to make and stand on judgements of your own. And it far easier to accept and to stand on the past, than to fight for the answers of the future

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

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

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.

I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington. And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.