19th-century President Quotes

I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. "A good colonel makes a good regiment," is an axiom.

Rutherford B. Hayes

A noble life crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.

James A. Garfield

My own message to the NATO governments never varied — I hammered it home everywhere. If we could make a go of a practical pact permitting common military plans, procurement, organization, and control of the forces of NATO, the security of Western Europe would be assured. The region would then become a complex which would be, militarily, economically, and politically, as powerful as any other in the world.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.

William Howard Taft

The Latin American people believed and feel that we Filipinos form past of that vast family, the children of Spain. Thus, although Spain ceased to govern those countries many years ago and although another nation is sovereign in the Philippines, those Latin-American peoples feel themselves as brothers to the people of the Philippines. It is the Spanish language that still binds us to those peoples, and the Spanish language will bind us to those peoples eternally if we have the wisdom and patriotism of preserving it.

Manuel L. Quezon

We must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature.

Warren G. Harding

Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure.

Benjamin Harrison

I got very well acquainted with Joe Stalin, and I like old Joe! He is a decent fellow. But Joe is a prisoner of the Politburo.

Harry S. Truman

If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.

The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as it exists, our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question.

Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to labor. The laborer is the author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there would be no government, no leading class, and nothing to preserve.

Ulysses S. Grant

If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice.

Calvin Coolidge