Horace Greeley Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

Horace Greeley
He cannot wisely consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live.

Horace Greeley
I do not intrude to tell you—for you must know already—that a great proportion of those who triumphed in you election, and of all who desire the unqualified suppression of the Rebellion now desolating our country, are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of the Rebels. I write only to set succinctly and unmistakably before you what we require, what we think we have a right to expect, and of what we complain.

Horace Greeley
There have been, during my two weeks sojourn, more brawls, more fights, more pistol-shots with criminal intent in this log city of one hundred and fifty dwellings, not three-fourths completed nor two-thirds inhabited, nor one-third fit to be, than in any community of no greater numbers on earth.

Horace Greeley
Let the Mormons have the territory to themselves—it is worth very little to others.

Horace Greeley
I never said all Democrats were saloon-keepers. What I said was that all saloon-keepers are Democrats.

Horace Greeley
These people [native Americans in the Great Plains] must die out—there is no help for them. God has given this earth to those who will subdue and cultivate it, and it is vain to struggle against his righteous decree.

Horace Greeley
The moment a newspaperman tires of his own campaign is the moment the public begins to notice it.

Horace Greeley
If, on a full and final review, my life and practice shall be found unworthy of my principles, let due infamy be heaped on my memory; but let none be led thereby to distrust the principles to which I proved recreant, nor yet the ability of some to adorn them by a suitable life and conversation. To unerring time be all this committed.

Horace Greeley
The masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them.

Horace Greeley
The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.

Horace Greeley
Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West, and grow up with the country.

Horace Greeley
I. We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. Most emphatically do we demand that such laws as have been recently enacted, which therefore may fairly be presumed to embody the present will and to be dictated by the present needs of the Republic, and which, after due consideration have received your personal sanction, shall by you be carried into full effect, and that you publicly and decisively instruct your subordinates that such laws exist, that they are binding on all functionaries and citizens, and that they are to be obeyed to the letter.

Horace Greeley
It takes three log houses to make a city in Kansas, but they begin calling it a city as soon as they have staked out the lots.

Horace Greeley
The best business you can go into you will find on your father's farm or in his workshop. If you have no family or friends to aid you, and no prospect opened to you there, turn your face to the great West, and there build up a home and fortune.

Horace Greeley
Where Labor stands idle... there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains.

Horace Greeley
Abstaining is favorable both to the head and the pocket.

Horace Greeley
II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nations consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, We cannot conceive.

Horace Greeley
My leading idea was the establishment of a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other.

Horace Greeley
If any young man is about to commence the world, we say to him, publicly and privately, Go to the West.

Horace Greeley