While modes of fighting were different in the time of Lincoln from that of Washington, and still more different today, the spirit that wins is just the same.

An equal meed of praise belongs to those men who prepared in advance.

In the army you developed two or three or half a dozen great geniuses.

Every one of you who has seen or studied about a modern warship knows that it is a singularly delicate and complicated as well as a singularly formidable bit of mechanism.

No improvement in firearms, no perfection of equipment, no change in tactics will avail unless back of them all lies the spirit that sent you and your fellows from '61 to '65, again and again against the Confederate lines.

We won out because our fathers had iron in their blood, because they dared greatly and did greatly, because when they were convinced where their duty lay they resolutely did it, no matter what the cost.

It is a much easier thing to tell people that you have got a patent recipe that—will save them from having to take trouble themselves than it is to tell them perfectly plain, homely truths.

One secret, perhaps I might say the chief secret, of Mr. Blaine's extraordinary hold upon the affections of his countrymen was his entirely genuine and unaffected Americanism.

We have got to do it somehow, and I ask that all men stand shoulder to shoulder as Americans to see that they do it well.

He has got in the first place to be honest and decent.

These problems are very difficult.

We are all of us apt to get to talking and thinking of the nation and the state as abstractions.

Government by the majority in Congress had practically come to a stop when Mr. Reed became Speaker.

We should not be here if it were not for them, but their exercise has caused great questions to rise in our national life.

We need other things, too; we have got to have a proper ideal of our lives; each man must do his duty by his neighbor.

Never in their history has each man had, as he has now, such a good chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Our salvation now, as in the old days, lies in the practical applying of principles that, in theory, we admit to be the only principles according to which it is possible to administer this Republic.

We will govern them primarily in their interests, but in our own interests also.