presidents Quotes

“They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”

“Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.”

“Whatever the prerogatives of the executive power may be, the period which immediately precedes an election and the moment of its duration must always be considered as a national crisis, which is perilous in proportion to the internal embarrassments and the external dangers of the country.”

“The private citizen, who employs the most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the combat, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern. All laws and all the negotiations he undertakes are to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, not to the nation, but to its chief; and the influence of the government, if not injurious to the country, is at least no longer beneficial to the community for which it was created.”

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”

“I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.”

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

“Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.”

“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”

“I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough.... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

“Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.”

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”

“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”

“The prospect is chilling, on every Side. Gloomy, dark, melancholy, and dispiriting. When and where will the light spring up?”

“Power always thinks... that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”

“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

“While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

“The point was, there didn’t need to be an answer because he wasn’t going to be president. Trump’s longtime friend Roger Ailes liked to say that if you wanted a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network.”

“Only a lunatic would want to be president. These lunatics are created deliberately by those who wish to be presided over.”

“I can’t believe it. My president is black like me. ”

“When a man is very good and knows a great deal, he is elected president. They have torch-light processions and bands, and everyone makes speeches. I used to think I might perhaps be a president, but I never thought about being an earl. I didn’t know anything about being an earl.”

“As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.”