To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.
Revolutions never go backwards.
Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.
Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.
A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war.
Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.
Though plunged in ills and exercised in care, Yet never let the noble mind despair.
Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world's progress.
Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.
Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!
The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.
Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.
Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.
War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.
What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press has done for the mind; and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.
Brains and character rule the world. The most distinguished Frenchman of the last century said: Men succeed less by their talents than their character. There were scores of men a hundred years ago who had more intellect than Washington. He outlives and overrides them all by the influence of his character.
The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
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