Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Andrew Jackson - Page 3

I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.

It is a well-settled principle of the international code that where one nation owes another a liquidated debt which it refuses or neglects to pay the aggrieved party may seize on the property belonging to the other, its citizens or subjects, sufficient to pay the debt without giving just cause of war.

The individual who refuses to defend his rights when called by his government deserves to be a slave, and must be punished as an enemy of his country and a friend to her foe

I carried $5000 when I went to Washington. I returned with barely $90 in our pockets.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

Although I could lament in the language and feelings of David for Absalom, I am constrained to say, peace to his manes. Let us weep for the living, and not for the dead.

There goes a man made by the Lord Almighty and not by his tailor.

Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms.

Their object is disunion.

After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary.

Too much praise cannot be bestowed on those who managed my artillery.

The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. . . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?

Freemasonry is an establishment founded on the benevolent intention of extending and conferring mutual happiness upon the best and truest principles of moral life and social virtue.

Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found.

Oh, do not cry - be good children and we will all meet in heaven.

The hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead. An investigation kills and it and its supporters dead. Let this be had.

I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

Being the dependents of the general government, and looking to its treasury as the source of all their emoluments, the state officers, under whatever names they might pass and by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.

Freemasonry is a moral order, instituted by virtuous men, with the praiseworthy design of recalling to our remembrance the most sublime truths, in the midst of the most innocent and social pleasures, founded on liberality, brotherly love and charity.

The murderer only takes the life of the parent and leaves his character as a goodly heritage to his children, whilst the slanderer takes away his goodly reputation and leaves him a living monument to his children's disgrace.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people.

It is pleasing to reflect that results so beneficial, not only to the States immediately concerned, but to the harmony of the Union, will have been accomplished by measures equally advantageous to the Indians. What the native savages become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without hope, and almost without thought.

Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven. I want to meet you all, white and black, in Heaven. Our Federal Union! It must be preserved! [Toast at a celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday, April 13 1830]

His [the President's] earnest desire is, that you may perpetuated and preserved as a nation; and this he believes can only be doneand secured by your consent to remove to a country beyond the Mississippi.... Where you are, it is not possible you can live contented and happy.

Being satisfied, from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirit as a drink is not only needless but hurtful; and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the community, we hereby express our convention that should the citizens of the United States, and especially ALL YOUNG MEN, discontinue entirely the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world.

Heaven will be heaven only if my wife is there.

I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

This season has been full of rewards. The dinners and banquets just keep on coming. It's great. We want to carry it on as long as we can.

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute.

Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government, are of high importance.

Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.

Freemasonry is an institution calculated to benefit mankind.

I find virtue to be found amongst the farmers of the country alone, not about courts, where courtiers dwell.

Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty.

I not only rejoice, but congratulate my beloved country Texas is reannexed, and the safety, prosperity, and the greatest interest of the whole Union is secured by this great and important national act.

My political enemies I can freely forgive; but as for who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country -- Doctor, that is a different case.

I am now eased in my finances and replenished in my wardrobe.

To extraordinary powers of labor, both mental and physical, he unites that tact and judgement which are requisite to the successful direction of such an office as that of Chief Magistrate of a free people.

From his proceedings in Congress, he appears demented, and his actings and doings inspire my pity more than anger.