Thaddeus Stevens Quotes

#1. The freedom of a government does not depend on the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them.

Thaddeus Stevens

#2. I don't hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and nothing more.

Thaddeus Stevens

#3. I answer, because I live among men and not among angels.

Thaddeus Stevens

#4. kill trhe beast before it kills you

Thaddeus Stevens

#5. I care not whether the soldiers are of Milesian, Teutonic, African or Angelo-Saxon descent. I despise the principle that make a difference between them in the hour of battle and of death.

Thaddeus Stevens

#6. The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.

Thaddeus Stevens

#7. The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this government can never be, as it never has been, a true republic.

Thaddeus Stevens

#8. I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the
downtrodden of every race and language and color.'

Thaddeus Stevens

#9. Strip the proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans, send forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plow, and you will thus humble proud traitors.

Thaddeus Stevens

#10. No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws.

Thaddeus Stevens

#11. I repose in this quiet and secluded spot not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR.

Thaddeus Stevens

#12. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer.

Thaddeus Stevens

#13. I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

Thaddeus Stevens

#14. I wish the Indians had newspapers of their own. If they had, you would have horrible pictures of the cold-blooded murders of inoffensive Indians.

Thaddeus Stevens

#15. There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion - in the bloody religions of the heathen.

Thaddeus Stevens

#16. Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

Thaddeus Stevens