Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.

There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite.

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

Tortured for the Republic.

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.