Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

There is always room at the top.

— 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

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

— Daniel Webster

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

— Daniel Webster

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

— Daniel Webster

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

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

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.

— Daniel Webster

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

— Daniel Webster

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

— Daniel Webster

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

— Daniel Webster

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

— Daniel Webster

What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.

— Daniel Webster

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

— Daniel Webster

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

— Daniel Webster

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

— Daniel Webster

We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

— Daniel Webster

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

— Daniel Webster

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

— Daniel Webster

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

There is always room at the top.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Wisdom begins at the end.

— Daniel Webster

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

— Daniel Webster

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

— 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

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread.

— Daniel Webster

The law: it has honored us; may we honor it.

— Daniel Webster

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.

— Daniel Webster

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

— Daniel Webster

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

— Daniel Webster

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

— Daniel Webster

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

— Daniel Webster

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.

— Daniel Webster

We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

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

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

— Daniel Webster

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

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

He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

“What is an oath?” . . . [I]t is founded on a degree of consciousness that there is a Power above us that will reward our virtues or punish our vices. . . . [O]ur system of oaths in all our courts, by which we hold liberty and property and all our rights, are founded on or rest on Christianity and a religious belief.

— Daniel Webster

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

— Daniel Webster

There are persons who constantly clamor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and pernicious influence of wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and a means by which small capitalists become united in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke the fountain of industry and dry all streams.

— Daniel Webster

Sea of upturned faces.

— 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

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

— Daniel Webster

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

— Daniel Webster

The law: It has honored us; may we honor it.

— Daniel Webster

I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand upon it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

There is always room at the top.

— Daniel Webster

I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.

— Daniel Webster

Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers 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

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

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work on men's immortal minds, if we impress on them with high principles, the just fear of God and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

— Daniel Webster

If there be any thing in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.

— Daniel Webster

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

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.

— Daniel Webster

The civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.

— Daniel Webster

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.

— Daniel Webster

Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

— 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

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.

— 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

Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.

— Daniel Webster

Washington is in the clear upper sky.

— Daniel Webster

The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing.

— Daniel Webster

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

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Daniel Webster

Fearful concatenation of circumstances.

— Daniel Webster

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.

— Daniel Webster

Suppose that, by some new discovery, or some improved mode of culture, only one per cent could be added to the annual results of English cultivation; this, of itself, would materially affect the comfortable subsistence of millions of human beings.

— Daniel Webster

From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

— Daniel Webster

Spain stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Every thing was force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell by fire and sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire and sword.

— Daniel Webster

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.

— Daniel Webster

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

— Daniel Webster

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.

— Daniel Webster