Great Throughts Treasury

"The ideals of yesterday are the truths of today."

"Our differences are polices; our agreements, principles."

"Business life, whether among ourselves or with other people, is even a sharp struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future. Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century."

"Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people."

"Expositions are the timekeepers of progress."

"Good-bye -- good bye, all. It is God's way. His will, not ours, be done. Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee."

"I can't see what they could accomplish in Washington if they got there. The whole thing is too visionary."

"I am a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform."

"I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the night of the fifteenth of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation."

"That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example – and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history."

"The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake."

"The American people, entrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine that we lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of liberty to others."

"I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a badge of honor. It is a symbol of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country."

"Illiteracy must be banished from the land if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world which, under Providence, we ought to achieve."

"I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made President."

"Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war."

"In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest."

"Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers, who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial, and who will not forsake us so long as we obey His commandments and walk humbly in His footsteps."

"Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth."

"The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation."

"The free man cannot be long an ignorant man."

"The more profoundly we study this wonderful book [the Bible], and the more closely we observe its divine precept, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation."

"The people of this country want an industrial policy that is for America and Americans."

"To him was given the duty and responsibility of making that great classic of liberty, the Declaration of Independence, no longer an empty promise, but a glorious fulfillment."

"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed."

"The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes—not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt—through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both."

"The people against the bosses."

"We cannot always do what is best, but we can do what is practical at the time."

"Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also."

"Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century."

"We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny."