18th-century Politician Quotes

Method is everything in archaeology, my boy. Why, we always deal with our finds in order.

Sir Joseph Scott, 1st Baronet

In the large animals, you see And own a wise economy - Without their aids, Man's boundless sway You feel would languish and decay.

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

They have sent me to France destitute of everything; they have seized my property and my papers, and have spread atrocious calumnies concerning me. Is it not like cutting off a man's legs and telling him to walk? Is it not like cutting out a man's tongue and telling him to talk? Is it not burying a man alive?

Toussaint Louverture

There is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us.

Samuel Egerton Brydges

In fact he enables us not by making us supernaturally strong, but by opening our eyes. The Holy Spirit is that power which opens eyes that are closed, hearts that are unaware and minds that shrink from too much reality.

John Taylor of Caroline

I consider this Negro [Benjamin Banneker] as fresh proof that the powers of the mind are disconnected with the colour of the skin or in other words, a striking contradiction to Mr. Hume's doctrine that "the Negroes are naturally inferior to the whites and unsusceptible of attainments in arts and sciences.

The survival technique of the tyrannosaurus was ferocity; it is extinct. The survival technique of the dodo was passive resistance; it is extinct. The survival technique of man is science...

Joseph Marshall Walker

He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes.

James Harris (grammarian)

The dread of death seems implanted in the nature of human kind as a peculiar curse, since no other species of created beings are capable of it.

Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey

No man in America ever strove more, and more successfully first to bring about a Congress in 1765, and then to support it ever afterwards than myself.

Christopher Gadsden

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776...

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

To be told that mathematics is good training for the mind does not insure either the intelligent or ardent pursuit of this branch of science.

We have dared to be free—let us continue free by ourselves, and for ourselves; let us imitate the growing child; his own strength breaks his leading-strings, which become useless and troublesome to him in his walk. What are the people who have fought us? What people would reap the fruits of our labors? And what a dishonorable absurdity, to conquer to be slaves!

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Nature has already done her part, for this region, and man has done, is doing and will continue to do his, to make it all that man can ever desire it to be, forever.

The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account

Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.

I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess. Look, being a lame flunky for a batshit crazy person isn't all that bad. Stay alive long enough and you may sneak your way to Washington!

Martin Van Buren

My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

John Quincy Adams

The institutions under which we live, my countrymen, secure each person in the perfect enjoyment of all his rights.

The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important service in our own revolution, but as being, on a more extended scale, the friend of human rights, and able advocate of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americas are not, nor can they be, indifferent.

I shall pursue a straight forward course deviating neither to the right or left so that comes what may I hope my real friends will never have to blush for me, so far as truth, honesty & fair dealings are concerned.

The liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation.

William Henry Harrison

Compañeros, this old man is my father. He has come to offer me rewards in the name of the Spaniards. I have always respected my father but my country comes first.

Vicente Guerrero

Nothing short of absolute independence in both government and commerce will satisfy us. This we shall have or cease to live.

Henri Christophe