Daniel Webster Quotes

97 Sourced Quotes

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American!

Daniel Webster
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

Daniel Webster
Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens. he did this because loved christians and wanted everyone to be one.

Daniel Webster
Let us then stand by the Constitution as it is, and by our country as it is, one, united, and entire.… We have one country, one Constitution, and one destiny.

Daniel Webster
Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.

Daniel Webster
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

Daniel Webster
Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man may be civilized, in some degree, without great progress in manufactures and with little commerce with his distant neighbors. But without the cultivation of the earth, he is, in all countries, a savage. Until he gives up the chase, and fixes himself in some place and seeks a living from the earth, he is a roaming barbarian. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

Daniel Webster
The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly - in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly.

Daniel Webster
Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will' undertake its safety, and nothing can save it, if they leave that safety in any hands but their own.

Daniel Webster
Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

Daniel Webster
Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.

Daniel Webster
From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

Daniel Webster
From the time of its discovery, the Spanish government pushed forward its settlements in America, not only with vigor, but with eagerness.... The robbery and destruction of the native race was the achievement of standing armies, in the right of the king, and by his authority, fighting in his name, for the aggrandizement of his power and the extension of his prerogatives, with military ideas under arbitrary maxims, — a portion of that dreadful instrumentality by which a perfect despotism governs a people. As there was no liberty in Spain, how could liberty be transmitted to Spanish colonies?

Daniel Webster
The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a merely human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it.

Daniel Webster
On the other hand, the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousnessinspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author of its being.

Daniel Webster
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work on men's immortal minds, if we impress on them with high principles, the just fear of God and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

Daniel Webster
The character of Washington … is a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining without twinkling or obscuration, with a clear, steady, beneficent light.

Daniel Webster
He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.

Daniel Webster
It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,—Independence now and Independence forever.

Daniel Webster
Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Daniel Webster
The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless.

Daniel Webster
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

Daniel Webster
Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration for ever!

Daniel Webster
No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country.

Daniel Webster
There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing so strange.

Daniel Webster