You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.

Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.

Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.

What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.