Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization.

There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad.

Law must be based upon justice, else it can not stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and…

Barbarism has, and can have, no place in a civilized world.

It is a good thing to combine a warm heart with a cool head.

We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.

It is difficult to express the full measure of obligation under which this country is to the men who from ’61 to ’65 took up the most terrible and vitally necessary task which has ever fallen to the lot of any generation of men in the…

But no less is it true that had either been influenced by self-seeking ambition, by callous disregard of others, by contempt for the moral law, he would have dashed us down into the black gulf of failure.

It is easy enough to devise a scheme of government which shall absolutely nullify all these qualities and ensure failure to everybody, whether he deserves success or not.

Woe to all of us if ever as a people we grow to condone evil because it is successful.

If, after making all the effort that his strength of body and of mind permits, he yet honorably fails, why, he is still entitled to a certain share of respect because he has made the effort.

Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism.

It shows a thoroughly unhealthy state of mind when the public pardons with a laugh failure to keep a distinct pledge, on the ground that a politician can not be expected to confine himself to the truth when on the stump or the platform.

If Washington and Lincoln had not had in them the whipcord fibre of moral and mental strength, the soul that steels itself to endure disaster unshaken and with grim resolve to wrest victory from defeat, then the one could not have founded…

The least touch of flabbiness, of unhealthy softness, in either would have meant ruin for this nation, and therefore the downfall of the proudest hope of mankind.

Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization.

Other men have rendered great service to the country, but the service you rendered was not merely great—it was incalculable.

It would be a sad and evil thing for this country if ever the day came when we considered the great deeds of our forefathers as an excuse for our resting slothfully satisfied with what has been already done.

We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done, and to persevere through the long days of slow progress or of seeming failure which…

But lip-loyalty by itself avails very little, whether it is expressed concerning a nation or an ideal.

We must not flinch from our duties abroad merely because we have even more important duties at home.

This country can not afford to have its sons less than men; but neither can it afford to have them other than good men.

The men who founded these communities showed practically by their life-work that it is indeed the spirit of adventure which is the maker of commonwealths.

Their traits of daring and hardihood and iron endurance are not merely indispensable traits for pioneers; they are also traits which must go to the make-up of every mighty and successful people.

But when we pay homage to the hardy, grim, resolute men who, with incredible toil and risk, laid deep the foundations of the civilization that we inherit, let us steadily remember that the only homage that counts is the homage of deeds—not…