Top 154 Quotes & Sayings by Daniel Webster

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

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

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

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

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

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

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

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

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

There is always room at the top.

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

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

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

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

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

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

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

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

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Wisdom begins at the end.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.

Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from...the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.

The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism.

Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution of your country and the government established under it. Leave evils which exist in some parts of the country, but which are beyond your control, to the all-wise direction of an over-ruling Providence. Perform those duties which are present, plain and positive. Respect the laws of your country.

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest

If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from anothe quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters

This is the Book. I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year. It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct. It fits man for life--it prepares him for death.