Top 334 Quotes & Sayings by Calvin Coolidge - Page 6

Whenever Nature's bounty is in danger of exhaustion, the chemist has sought for a substitute. The conquest of disease has made great progress as a result of your efforts. Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation. Waste materials, formerly cast aside, are now being utilized.

Unless we lay our course in accordance with this principle, the great power for good in the world with which we have been intrusted by a Divine Providence will be turned to a power for evil.

It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.

It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.

The two great political parties of the nation have existed for the purpose, each in accordance with its own principles, of undertaking to serve the interests of the whole nation. Their members of the Congress are chosen with that great end in view.

[May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world.

We have found that when men and women are left free to find the places for which they are best fitted, some few of them will indeed attain less exalted stations than under a regime of privilege; but the vast multitude will rise to a higher level, to wider horizons, to worthier attainments.

I guess I am not naturally energetic. I like to sit around and talk.

There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.

If you can get enough votes so that mine will make a majority, you can have it.

We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. ... If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.

Everyone has an influence on public affairs if he will take the trouble to exert it.

I always enjoy animal acts.

Theodore Roosevelt was always getting himself in hot water by talking before he had to commit himself upon issues not well-defined.

America... Cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.

Baseball is our national game.

There has been abroad many times some criticism of our Government, of our people, and our ways, but that has demonstrated, I think, that when they are in real trouble and real difficulty over there, they turn to us as a nation that will be fair with them--one in whose judgment and in whose character they can rely; and that not withstanding differences that have seemed to exist, they are willing to abide by the faith that they have in us, and I think that is a very substantial accomplishment.

I should think that an ordinary copy of the King James version would have been good enough for those Congressmen.

It has become the custom in our country to expect all Chief Executives, from the President down, to conduct activities analogous to an entertainment bureau. No occasion is too trivial for its promoters to invite them to attend and deliver an address.

I shouldn't want you to be surprised, or to draw any particular inference from my making speeches, or not making speeches, out there. I don't recall any candidate for President that ever injured himself very much by not talking.

These things do not happen by chance. There is much less luck in public affairs than some suppose.

It is only when people can feel that their lives and the property which their industry has produced today will continue to be safe...that there can be...stability of value and...economic progress.

I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.

It is accordance with our determination to refrain from aggression and build up a sentiment and practice among nations more favorable to peace, that we ratified a treaty for the limitation of naval armaments made in 1921, earnestly sought for a further extension of this principle in 1927, and have secured the consent of fourteen important nations to the negotiation of a treaty condemning recourse to war, renouncing it is an instrument of national policy, and pledging each other to seek no solution of their disagreements except by pacific means.

Parties do not maintain themselves. They are maintained by effort. The government is not self-existent. It is maintained by the effort of those who believe in it. The people of America believe in American institutions, the American form of government and the American method of transacting business.

It is equally clear that a government must govern, must prescribe and enforce laws within its sphere or cease to be a government. Moreover, the individual must be independent and free within his own sphere or cease to be an individual. The fundamental question was then, is now, and always will be through what adjustments, by what actions, these principles may be applied.

Realizing that we can not live unto ourselves alone, we have contributed of our resources and our counsel to the relief of the suffering and the settlement of the disputes among the European nations. Because of what America is and what America has done, a firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.

What the end of the carnage of World War II meant to those who remember it, can never be forgotten, but to all those who don't, its meaning can never be fully understood!

Look well to the hearthstone; therein all hope for America lies.

All growth depends upon activity.

[Sun Yat-sen is a] combined Benjamin Franklin and George Washington of China.

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind.

I always figured the American public wanted a solemn ass for president, so I went along with them.

Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade.