History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.

I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.

Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its luster; but when they have sunk in the earth again, the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on.

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.