Great Throughts Treasury

"Too many people do not card what happens as long as it does not happen to them."

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority."

"A government is for the benefit of all the people."

"A system in which we may have an enforced rest from legislation for two years is not bad."

"A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people."

"A National Government cannot create good times. It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grow, but it can, by pursuing a meddlesome policy, attempting to change economic conditions, and frightening the investment of capital, prevent a prosperity and a revival of business which might otherwise have taken place."

"Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law."

"Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America."

"Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the office."

"As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity."

"As the Republican platforms says, the welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country."

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority."

"Don't sit up nights thinking about making me president for that will never come and I have no ambition in that direction. Any party which would nominate me would make a great mistake."

"Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents ? but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea."

"Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgement."

"Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood."

"Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man."

"George Washington intended this to be a Federal city, and it is a Federal city, and it tingles down to the feet of every man, whether he comes from Washington State, or Los Angeles, or Texas, when he comes and walks these city streets and begins to feel that this is my city; I own a part of this Capital, and I envy for the time being those who are able to spend their time here. I quite admit that there are defects in the system of government by which Congress is bound to look after the government of the District of Columbia. It could not be otherwise under such a system, but I submit to the judgment of history that the result vindicates the foresight of the fathers."

"Golf in the interest of good health and good manners. It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman."

"Government, Perfect, Expect Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment. - William Howard Taft"

"I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am president the less of a party man I seem to become."

"I am a Unitarian. I believe in God. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe."

"I am glad to be going. This is the lonesomest pace in the world?"

"I am going to do what I think is best for the country, within my jurisdiction and power, and then let the rest take care of itself."

"I am delighted to learn that the dastardly attack was unsuccessful. The resort to violence is out of place in our 20th century civilization."

"I am president now, and tired of being kicked around."

"I am not in favor of having government do anything that private citizens can do as good or better"

"I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else."

"I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other."

"I feel certain that he would not recognize a generous impulse if he met it on the street."

"I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe."

"I don't remember that I ever was President."

"I hate to use the patronage as a club unless I have to."

"I know this, and I know it from actual experience in the Orient, that the progress of modern Christian civilization has largely depended on the earnest hard work of the Christian missions of every denomination."

"I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town."

"I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me."

"I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God."

"I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters."

"I would like to have an ample fund to spread the light of Republicanism, but I am willing to undergo the disadvantage to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics for unworthy purposes."

"If humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain."

"I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk."

"If they will play fair I will play fair, but if they won't then I reserve all my rights to do anything I find myself able to do."

"It is important, of course, that controversies be settled right, but there are many civil questions which arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled. Of course a settlement of a controversy on a fundamentally wrong principle of law is greatly to be deplored, but there must of necessity be many rules governing the relations between members of the same society that are more important in that their establishment creates a known rule of action than that they proceed on one principle or another. Delay works always for the man with the longest purse."

"Masonry aims at the promotion of morality and higher living by the cultivation of the social side of man, the rousing in him of the instincts of charity and love of his kind. It rests surely on the foundation of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God."

"Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible."

"Machine politics and the spoils system are as much an enemy of a proper and efficient government system of civil service as the boll weevil is of the cotton crop."

"In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily."

"Masonry, according to the general acceptation of the term, is an art founded on the principles of geometry, and devoted to the service and convenience of mankind. But Freemasonry, embracing a wider range and having a nobler object in view, namely, the cultivation and improvement of the human mind, may with more propriety be called a science, inasmuch as, availing itself of the terms of the former, it inculcates the principles of the purest morality, though its lessons are for the most part veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols."

"Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race."

"My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States."