19th-century President Quotes

Abraham Lincoln

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Charles de Gaulle

Theodore Roosevelt

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Harry S. Truman

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.

Theodore Roosevelt

I talk. It is necessary. Action puts the passions to work, but it is speech that arouses them.

Charles de Gaulle

As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I can not enter the ring on the money basis--first, because, in the main, it iswrong; and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money. I say, in the main, the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right, and indispensable.

Abraham Lincoln

Peace, like war, can succeed only where there is a will to enforce it, and where there is available power to enforce it.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

I am against this Treaty not because I am a man of war but because I am a man of peace. I am against this Treaty because it will not end the centuries of conflict between the two nations of Great Britain and Ireland.

Éamon de Valera

In politics evils should be remedied not revenged.

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness".
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."
Those are undeniable truths.

It is confidently believed that our system may be safely extended to the utmost bounds of our territorial limits...

At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner - the first to be injured by a depreciated currency and the last to receive the benefit of its correction - is practically defenseless.

Grover Cleveland

The founders of the Republic dealt with things as they were presented to them, in a spirit of self sacrificing Patriotism and as time has proved, with a comprehensive wisdom which it will always be safe for us to consult

Franklin Pierce

If we allow one of the finest and the richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace, and a blighting stigma upon our nationality.

Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.

Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.

In Spanish: Pobre México! Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos

I am not a pacifist. That is not my attitude. But all my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity — the necessity of fighting Bolshevism or of defending one's country.

Paul von Hindenburg

Germany's population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines. Her resources were intact, above and below ground... In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe. In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased.

Raymond Poincaré

Something had been done for us which, after two thousand years of hope and yearning, would at last give us a resting-place in this terrible world.

Of the Balfour declaration

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other.

Millard Fillmore

It is the unthankful people to whom I have given protection who are always dissatisfied, and, what is more, they actually want me to alter my laws to suit them.

Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The beginning of all wisdom is acknowledgement of facts.

Juho Kusti Paasikivi

Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.

The countries of the American continent and the adjacent islands are for the United States the natural marts of supply and demand.

Chester A. Arthur

There must be a solidifying of our populations into one compact whole. The various indigenous tribes must be brought into the body politic, taught the duties and responsibilities of civilized government. Into them must be infused or inculcated an appreciative knowledge and understanding of hopes and aspirations of the Fathers who established this nation. There should be no words known in our National Vocabulary of Speech or even of thought as "Americo-Liberian"; "the country-man"; "the new-comer"; "the Sierra Leone man"; or such like terms of designating the various elements of our population.

Charles D. B. King

Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: 'Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,' and exclaim, 'Christ first, our country next!'

Honesty, capacity, and industry are nowhere more indispensable than in public employment.

William McKinley