Daniel Webster Quotes

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.

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. 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. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from anothe quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.

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

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

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.

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.

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

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

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.

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

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

Faith puts God between us and our circumstances.

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.

This is the Book. I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year. It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct. It fits man for life--it prepares him for death.

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution of your country and the government established under it. Leave evils which exist in some parts of the country, but which are beyond your control, to the all-wise direction of an over-ruling Providence. Perform those duties which are present, plain and positive. Respect the laws of your country.

Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.

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

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.

Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.