Top 100 Quotes About Daniel Webster
#1. That speech (Daniel Webster's) raised the idea of Union above contract or expediency and enshrined it in the American heart.
Robert A. Caro
#2. I became an American on Nov. 4, 2010, at an elegant ceremony in Great Hall of Bullfinch's Faneuil Hall, Boston, beneath a vast painting of Daniel Webster debating the preservation of the Union with Robert Hayne of South Carolina, before the Civil War.
Nigel Hamilton
#3. Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.
Taylor Hackford
#5. The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.
John Quincy Adams
#6. Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.
Daniel Webster
#7. 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
#8. The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
Daniel Webster
#9. No power but Congress can declare war, but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?
Daniel Webster
#10. Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
Daniel Webster
#11. All creeds are fallible and uncertain evidences of evangelical piety.
Daniel Webster
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#16. Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.
Daniel Webster
#17. We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.
Daniel Webster
#18. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters
Daniel Webster
#19. How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
Daniel Webster
#20. Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.
Daniel Webster
#21. A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.
Daniel Webster
#22. It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government.
Daniel Webster
#24. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like "another morn," "Risen on mid-noon;" and the sky on which you closed your eye was cloudless.
Daniel Webster
#26. The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.
Daniel Webster
#27. Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.
Daniel Webster
#28. We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people.
Daniel Webster
#29. A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Daniel Webster
#31. If all my talents and powers were to be taken from me by some unscrutable Providence, and I had my choice of keeping but one, I would unhesitatingly ask for be allowed to keep the Power of Speaking, for through it I would quickly recover all the rest.
Daniel Webster
#32. Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.
Daniel Webster
#33. Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.
Daniel Webster
#34. 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
#35. There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession
Daniel Webster
#36. I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.
Daniel Webster
#37. 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 forever.
Daniel Webster
#38. Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.
Daniel Webster
#39. I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.
Daniel Webster
#40. There is something about men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightening, whirlwind, or earthquake, that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.
Daniel Webster
#41. 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
#42. I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a Divine interposition in our behalf ... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.
Daniel Webster
#43. Corruption of morals is rapid enough in any country without a bounty from government. And ... the Chief Magistrate of the United States should be the last man to accelerate its progress.
Daniel Webster
#44. Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
Daniel Webster
#45. If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.
Daniel Webster
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Where tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.
Daniel Webster
#49. Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet.
Daniel Webster
#50. Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.
Daniel Webster
#51. Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.
Daniel Webster
#52. He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread.
Daniel Webster
#53. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
Daniel Webster
#54. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will;
Daniel Webster
#55. Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.
Daniel Webster
#56. 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
#57. 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
#59. Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.
Daniel Webster
#61. Our profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it; it is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money catching.
Daniel Webster
#62. Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good master, but they mean to be master.
Daniel Webster
#63. 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
#64. If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.
Daniel Webster
#65. God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Daniel Webster
#67. The people's government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people.
January 1830
Daniel Webster
#68. It is, Sir, as I have said, a small College, And yet, there are those who love it.
Daniel Webster
#69. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path.
Daniel Webster
#70. 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
#71. A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.
Daniel Webster
#72. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from ... the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
Daniel Webster
#73. The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
Daniel Webster
#74. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.
Daniel Webster
#75. Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
Daniel Webster
#77. Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that
Daniel Webster
#78. If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest
Daniel Webster
#79. When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.
Daniel Webster
#80. Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.
Daniel Webster
#81. One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die a man. The bed of death brings every human being to his pure individuality, to the intense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of all relations - the relations between the creature and his Creator.
Daniel Webster
#82. The bible fits man for life and prepares him for death
Daniel Webster
#83. A representative form of government rests nor more on political contributions than on those laws which regulate the descent and transmission of property.
Daniel Webster
#84. Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.
Daniel Webster
#85. If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.
Daniel Webster
#86. There is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no enjoyment of life, unless a man can say, when he rises in the morning, I shall be subject to the decision of no unwise judge today.
Daniel Webster
#88. I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.
Daniel Webster
#89. If the States were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name.
Daniel Webster
#91. Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.
Daniel Webster
#92. I shall oppose all slavery extension and all increase of slave representation in all places, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against all combinations, against all compromises.
Daniel Webster
#93. No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.
Daniel Webster
#94. What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.
Daniel Webster
#96. Converse, converse, CONVERSE, with living men, face to face, mind to mind-that is one of the best sources of knowledge.
Daniel Webster
#97. The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
Daniel Webster
#98. The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.
Daniel Webster
#99. A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.
Daniel Webster
#100. Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.
Daniel Webster
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