Daniel Webster

We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.

Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

The law: it has honored us; may we honor it.

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.

Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.

We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people.

I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

There is always room at the top.

The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread.

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man’s life.

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.

It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly – in any other sense than a man’s house is a monopoly.

Wisdom begins at the end.

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.