Below you will find some quotations from some famous. Click on the link to find the name of the person you are looking for.
Ben Franklin Abraham Lincoln Winston Churchill Thomas Jefferson Ronald Reagan
George Washington John F. Kennedy Theodore Roosevelt Robert E. Lee
When there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
None but the well-bred man know how to confess a fault, or acknowledge himself in an error.
He that riseth late must trot all day.
Dost thou love Life? Then do not squander Time; for that's the stuff Life is made of.
Lost time is never found again.
Remember that time is money.
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Those who would sacrifice liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Important principles may and must be inflexible.
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God's side.
You cannot help the poor be destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.
"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." (Speech made to House of Commons on May 13, 1940, three days after becoming Prime Minister.)
"Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: 'We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.'" (September 9, 1941)
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." (Speech delivered to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940 following the collapse of France.)
Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee."
Winston: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it."
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.'' (Speech to Churchill's old school, Harrow, October 9, 1941)
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." (Speech at the peak of the Battle of Britain on August 20, 1940.)
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." (November 10, 1942.)
After being criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition and using a dangling participle in official documents, Churchill wrote in the margin: "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."
"This is a war of the unknown warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age." (Broadcast on the BBC, July 14, 1940.)
"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Speech about Dunkirk given in House of Commons June 4, 1940.)
"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
"Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat."
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. it is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
"We would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved."
"We are waiting for the long promised invasion. So are the fishes." (Radio broadcast to the French people October 21, 1940)
"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions."
"Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt…Give us the tools, and we will finish the job." (Radio broadcast February 9, 1941)
"These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race." (October 29, 1941)
"In Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known - and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old." (April 17, 1945)
"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."
"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
"If Hitler were to invade Hell, I would find occasion to make a favorable reference to the devil."
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. "
On Government and Liberty
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." --Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson
"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
"The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
"Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will; and externally to transact business with other nations through whatever organ it chooses, whether that be a King, Convention, Assembly, Committee, President, or whatever it be. The only thing essential is, the will of the nation."
"[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs."
"The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union."
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
"Independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government."
"Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law."
"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to."
"Opinions... constitute, indeed, moral facts, as important as physical ones to the attention of the public functionary."
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."
"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's."
"In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the Executive solely."
"A nation cannot be conquered which determines not to be so."
On the Right to Bear Arms
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
On Slavery
"Do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people... On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity."
"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way."
"Nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery; and certainly, nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object."
"The rights of human nature [are] deeply wounded by this infamous practice [of slavery]."
On Private Property
"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management."
"A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings."
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
-- Annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, March 30, 1961
October 27, 1964 (from his nationally televised speech, which he called "A Time for Choosing" but was later simply referred to as "The Speech," in support of candidate Barry Goldwater)
"They say the world
has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy
answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we
know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is
not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the
world, we learn we are spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There is
something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether
we like it or not, spells duty...We are for a provision that destitution should
not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted
Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against
those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its
fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means
that we want to end payments...We are for aiding our allies by sharing our
material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are
against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not
socialism, all over the world...We need true tax reform that will at least make
a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is
denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his
strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while
our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving
changes in our social structure...Yet any time you and I question the schemes of
the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It
seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that
all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always
"against," never "for" anything....You and I are told we
must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a
left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the
maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap
of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives,
those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward
path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people
is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits"....You and I
have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last
best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into
a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our
children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all
that could be done."
July 17, 1980 (from his
acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention)
"[The Democrats] say that the United States has had
its days in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith.… My fellow
citizens, I utterly reject that view."
January 20, 1981 (from his first
inaugural address)
"[N]o arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the
world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.
January 20, 1981, First Inaugural Address
It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
March 30, 1981 (his famous words
to Nancy Reagan when she arrived at the hospital following his assassination
attempt, a line first attributed to boxing's heavyweight Jack Dempsey when he
lost the title to Gene Tunney in 1926)
"Honey, I forgot to duck."
March 30, 1981 (to surgeons as he entered the operating room following
his assassination attempt)
"I hope you're all Republicans."
October 30, 1981 Government has an important role in helping develop a country's economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed.
June 1982 "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis -- a crisis where the demands of the economic order are colliding directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union.... [Communism will be] left on the ash heap of history."
March 8, 1983 (in a speech to the National Association of
Evangelicals)
"Let us beware that while they [Soviet rulers] preach
the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and
predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the
focus of evil in the modern world.... I urge you to beware the temptation ...,
to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of any evil empire,
to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove
yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil."
January 16, 1984, Address to the nation: History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
June 6, 1984 (at the D-Day
Commemoration in Normandy, France)
"We will always remember. We will always be proud. We
will always be prepared, so we may always be free."
August 15, 1986 (in remarks to
the White House Conference on Small Business)
"[G]overnment's view of the economy could be summed
up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
June 1987 (in his famed speech
near the Berlin Wall)
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall!"
September 25, 1987 (remarks in
Arlington, Virginia)
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who
reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who
understands Marx and Lenin."
January 11, 1989 (farewell
address to the nation)
"I've spoken of the shining city all my political
life…. And how stands the city on this winter night? … After 200 years, two
centuries, she still stands strong and true to the granite ridge, and her glow
has held no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all
who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are
hurtling through the darkness, toward home."
May 31, 1988 (in his address to students at Moscow State University)
"Freedom is the right to question and change the
established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the
marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and
seek solutions."
November 5,
1994 (from his letter to the American people revealing his Alzheimer's
diagnosis)
"In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great
honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home,
whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country
of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will
lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be
a bright dawn ahead."
It is our duty to make the best of our misfortunes, and not to suffer passion to interfere with our interest and public good.
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company.
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear-bought experience.
There is no restraining men's tongues or pens when charged with a little vanity.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
Reason, too late perhaps, may convince you of the folly in misspending time.
I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
To err is nature, to rectify error is glory.
My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.
Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.
To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.
Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master.
Liberty, when it begins to take
root, is a plant of rapid growth.
Forgive, but never forget.
The quality of American life must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters - one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
"We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done."
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it.
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
You can have anything you want - if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish - if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.
My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health.
My chief concern is to try to be an humble, earnest Christian.
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.
Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.
Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.
A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.
A union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets,
and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and
kindness, has no charm for me.
-- Robert E. Lee, Letter to his son, Jan. 1861
It is history that teaches us to hope.
--Robert E. Lee, Letter to Charles Marshall, c. 1866.
There is no better way of defending a long line than by moving
into the enemy's territory.
-- Robert E. Lee, Letter to Gen. J. R. Jones, March 21, 1863
"As far as I can judge from the papers we are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May God avert us from both." -General Robert E. Lee, January 1861
"There
is nothing left to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a
thousand deaths." -General Robert E. Lee, April 1865
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