From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
In this state of dangerous relaxation, exposed to the poisonous infusions of the enemy, and having no common danger to attract our attention, we were extinguishing, by stages, the ardor we began with, and surrendering by piece-meal the…
If the enemy has circulated a falsehood, they have unwisely aggravated us into life, and if they have told us the truth, they have unintentionally done us a service.
We have never deliberately sought victory, but snatched it; and bravely undone in an hour the blotted operations of a season.
Every passion but that of despair has been called to a tour of duty; and so mistaken has been the enemy, of our abilities and disposition, that when she supposed us conquered, we rose the conquerors.
HAD America pursued her advantages with half the spirit that she resisted her misfortunes, she would, before now, have been a conquering and a peaceful people; but lulled in the lap of soft tranquillity, she rested on her hopes, and…
It was not Newton's honor, neither could it be his pride, that he was an Englishman, but that he was a philosopher, the heavens had liberated him from the prejudices of an island, and science had expanded his soul as boundless as his…
Natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, carry the mind from the country to the creation, and give it a fitness suited to the extent.
In addition to this, it may be remarked, that men who study any universal science, the principles of which are universally known, or admitted, and applied without distinction to the common benefit of all countries, obtain thereby a larger…
In short, our minds seem to be measured by countries when we are men, as they are by places when we are children, and until something happens to disentangle us from the prejudice, we serve under it without perceiving it.
It frequently happens that in proportion as we are taught to dislike persons and countries, not knowing why, we feel an ardor of esteem upon the removal of the mistake: it seems as if something was to be made amends for, and we eagerly…
Copying her notions of the world from you, she formerly thought as you instructed, but now feeling herself free, and the prejudice removed, she thinks and acts upon a different system.
From a long habit of calling America your own, you suppose her governed by the same prejudices and conceits which govern yourselves.
Questions which, when determined, cannot be executed, serve only to show the folly of dispute and the weakness of disputants.
Say she shall not be independent, and it will signify as much as if they voted against a decree of fate, or say that she shall, and she will be no more independent than before.
They confound a military question with a political one, and undertake to supply by a vote what they lost by a battle.
That there are men in all countries to whom a state of war is a mine of wealth, is a fact never to be doubted.
The case now is not so properly who began the war, as who continues it.
A mind disarmed of its rage feels no pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel.
If there be any honor in pursuing self-destruction with inflexible passion--if national suicide be the perfection of national glory, you may, with all the pride of criminal happiness, expire unenvied and unrivalled.
There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war, abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or wrong.
No human foresight can discern, no conclusion can be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on foot by an invasion.
With an unsparing hand, and an insatiable mind, you have desolated the world, to gain dominion and to lose it; and while, in a frenzy of avarice and ambition, the east and the west are doomed to tributary bondage, you rapidly earned…
The natural feelings of every rational being will be against you, and wherever the story shall be told, you will have neither excuse nor consolation left.
