Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster
Daniel Websterwas an American statesman who twice served in the United States House of Representatives, representing New Hampshireand Massachusetts, served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusettsand was twice the United States Secretary of State, under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tylerand Millard Fillmore. Along with James G. Blaine, he is one of only two people who have served as Secretary of State under three presidents. He also sought the Whig Party nomination for President three times: in 1836, 1840...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth18 January 1782
CitySalisbury, NH
CountryUnited States of America
Daniel Webster quotes about
Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights.
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.
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.
If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.
We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.
What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
Good intentions will always be pleaded, for every assumption of power; but they cannot justify it ... It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended.
Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.
There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.
On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.
A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.
We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.