Daniel Webster Quotes

97 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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
Good intentions will always be pleaded, for every assumption of power; but they cannot justify it... It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended.

Daniel Webster
The cause of science and literature also imposes upon us an important and delicate trust. The wealth and population of the country are now so far advanced, as to authorize the expectation of a correct literature and a well formed taste, as well as respectable progress in the abstruse sciences.

Daniel Webster
The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

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
We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land - nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution.

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 the Northern states refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side.

Daniel Webster
A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

Daniel Webster
The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wickliff's dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be.

Daniel Webster
I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

Daniel Webster
There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another... If property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property.

Daniel Webster
I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.

Daniel Webster
Philosophical argument has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that was in me but my heart has always assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be reality.

Daniel Webster
If the blessings of our political and social condition have not been too highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the responsibility and duty which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance, through which whatever has been obtained by the spirit and efforts of our ancestors is to be communicated to our children.

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
Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.

Daniel Webster
It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!

Daniel Webster
There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

Daniel Webster
The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

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

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

Daniel Webster