Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.

Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.

Votes do not fall from the trees like ripe plums. They have to be fought for.

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.

You can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

If you make peaceful revolution impossible you make violent revolution inevitable

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you'll do things differently.

More men have been elected between Sundown and Sunup than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown.

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

Democracy is...the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

Hence 'the overthrow of government' as a coercive power, thereby denying God in another form.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

I'm not hard, I'm frightfully soft. But I will not be hounded.