God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.

...I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself.

The beauty of a democracy is that you never can tell when a youngster is born what he is going to do with himself, and that no matter how humbly he is born, no matter where he is born, no matter what circumstances hamper him at the outset, he has got a chance to master the minds and lead the imaginations of the whole country.

No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

A sure sign of an amateur is too much detail to compensate for too little life.

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.