Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Davy Crockett

You will find me standing up to my rack, as the people's faithful representative, and the public's most obedient, very humble servant.

It was expected of me that I was to bow to the name of Andrew Jackson... even at the expense of my conscience and judgement. such a thing was new to me, and a total stranger to my principles.

The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit.

The party in power, like Jonah's gourd, grew up quickly, and will quickly fall.

Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks.

Be always sure you are right - then go ahead.

Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!

I would rather be beaten, and be a man, than to be elected and be a little puppy dog.

I voted against this Indian bill, and my conscience yet tells me that I gave a good, honest vote, and one that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day of judgment.

Throughout the day no time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever.

I have suffered my self to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never a gain elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.

I now say that the oldest man living never heard of the president of a great nation to come down to open electioneering for his successor. It is treating the nation as if it was the property of a single individual, and he had the right to bequeath it to whom he pleased - the same as a patch of land for which he had the patent.

No man who has not tried it can imagine what dreadful hard work it is to listen. Splitting gum logs in the dog days is child's play to it. I've tried both, and give the preference to the gum logs.

If one man in the country could take all the money, what was the use of passing any bills about it?

I would rather be politically dead than hypocritically immortalized.

Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.

I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first rules in figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day. I should have continued longer if it hadn't been that I concluded I couldn't do any longer without a wife, and so I cut out to hunt me one.

We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.

Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them.

I have always supported measures and principles and not men.

For the information of young hunters, I will just say, in this place, that whenever a fellow gets bad lost, the way home is just the way he don't think it is. This rule will hit nine times out of ten.

It is a huckleberry above my persimmon to cipher out how it is, with six months' schooling only, I, David Crockett, find myself the most popular bookmaker of the day, and such is the demand for my works that I cannot write them half fast enough, no how I can fix it.

Whenever I had anything and saw a fellow being suffering, I was more anxious to relieve him than to benefit myself. And this is one of the true secrets of my being a poor man to this day.

A bulger of a place it is. The number of the ships beat me all hollow, and looked for all the world like a big clearing in the West, with the dead trees all standing.

I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust [tree].

There ain't no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.

I also told them of the manner in which I had been knocked down and dragged out, and that I didn't consider it a fair fight any how they could fix it. I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong I tell you, and I concluded my speech by telling them that I was done with politics for the present, and they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas.

You can all go to heck; I will go to Texas

Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice - a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

Farewell to ye all! In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.

I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless[ly] and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not attempt to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

It is quite possible that someone is insane and they think they have a chance. Not insane in the clinical sense, but they may have such a strong political ambition that they blind themselves to reality.

I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.

I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country here to settle.

Make sure you're right, then go ahead.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in the forest, than to belong to any party, further than to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of my country. The time will and must come, when honesty will receive its reward, and when the people of this nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem ourselves from the government of one man.

Remember these words when I am dead. First be sure you're right, then go ahead.

I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me... Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them.

You can go to hell -- I'm going to Texas.

I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.

You can all go to hell. I’m going to Texas.

My tongue speak what my heart thinks.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

If I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where the men are of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grows nowhere else on the face of the universal earth.

Although our great man at the head of the nation, has changed his course, I will not change mine.

Congress allows lemonade to the members and has it charged under the head of stationery-I move also that whiskey be allowed under the item of fuel.

Thare is no chance of hurrying bussiness here like in the legeslature of a State thare is such a desposition here to Show Eloquence that this will be a long Session and do no good.

I want people to be able to get what they need to live: enough food, a place to live, and an education for their children. Government does not provide these as well as private charities and businesses.

Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead.