Grover Cleveland Quotes

He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.

Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.

What do you imagine the American people would think of me if I wasted my time going to the ball game?

Good ball players make good citizens.

Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again.

The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrown of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wide disorder the citadel of misrule.

The admitted right of a government to prevent the influx of elements hostile to its internal peace and security may not be questioned, even where there is not treaty stipulation on the subject.

The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.

In these sad and ominous days of mad fortune chasing, every patriotic, thoughtful citizen, whether he fishes or not, should lament that we have not among our countrymen more fishermen.

Some day I will be better remembered.

The best results in the operation of a government wherein every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of the purely partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen. ... At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. ... Public extravagance begets extravagance among the people.

Sometimes I wake at night in the White House and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream.

At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner - the first to be injured by a depreciated currency and the last to receive the benefit of its correction - is practically defenseless.

I have tried so hard to do the right.

I'm only waiting for my wife to grow up.

My greatest trials come through those professing to be near and attached friends, who expect things.

Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity.

The paramount duty of maintaining public order and defending the interests of our own people may require the adoption of measures of restriction, but they should not tolerate the oppression of individuals of a special race.

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.

I have a Congress on my hands.

Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.

It is no credit to me to do right. I am never under any temptation to do wrong!

Being president means leaving one's name in the history book of which few men are authors. It is my fortune to be blessed with a proud name, one that parents will employ for generations to instill the values of honesty, independence, and above all, courage in their sons.

Patriotism is no substitute for a sound currency.

It is a condition which confronts us-not a theory.

It is the responsibility of the citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of the government to support its citizens.

I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.

Loyalty to the principles upon which our Government rests positively demands that the equality before the law which it guarantees to every citizen should be justly and in good faith conceded in all parts of the land.

The laboring classes constitute the main part of our population. They should be protected in their efforts peaceably to assert their rights when endangered by aggregated capital and all statutes on this subject should recognize the care of the State for honest toil and be framed with a view of improving the condition of the workingman

Honor lies in honest toil.

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice

I know that human prejudice - especially that growing out of race and religion - is cruelly inveterate and lasting.

Party honesty is party expediency.

After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth.

We will not forget that Liberty has made her home here, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected...A stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and mans oppression until Liberty enlightens the world.

I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.

He who takes the oath today to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation which every patriotic citizen . . . should share with him. . . . Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust.

Above all, tell the truth.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of a law.

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?

A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.

As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

I cannot help but think it perilous to suffer these lands or the sources of their irrigation to fall into the hands of monopolies, which by such means may exercise lordship over the areas dependent on their treatment for productiveness.

The broad rich acres of our agricultural plains have been long preserved by nature to become her untrammeled gift to a people civilized and free, upon which should rest, in well-distributed ownership, the numerous homes of enlightened, equal, and fraternal citizens... Nor should our vast tracts of so-called desert lands be yielded up to the monopoly of corporations or grasping individuals, as appears to be much the tendency under the existing statute.

Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.