William Seward

Columbia, great Republic, thou art blest, While Empires droop, and Monarchs sink to rest.

The Chief Magistrate of a great and powerful nation, should never indulge in party feelings.

Now is the time to exterminate that monster, called party spirit.

The interest, the honor, the ultimate prosperity of the whole country--its reputation and influence in the eyes of the world--demanded that the Government should be supported in its efforts to check the aggressions of foreign nations, and…

But the people of France, shut up in darkness during centuries of misrule, passed at a step from abject servitude to unlimited freedom.

The American colonists had been trained to rational conceptions of freedom, by lessons of wisdom and sagacity read them by their Puritan fathers, and by the experience in self-government, afforded during a century and a half of enjoyment…

The measurable failure of this struggle in France, teaches the necessity of due preparation before a people can advance to the permanent possession and enjoyment of their rights.

No German Prince could now send a man, or a musket, to war against its principles.

Without strength, and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured.

If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel and creep all their lives.

It should be your care therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children, and exalt their courage, to accelerate and animate their industry and activity, to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice…

The Saracens, the Knights of Malta, the army and navy in the service of the English Republic, among many others, are instances to show to what an exalted height, valor or bravery or courage may be raised, by artificial means.

The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing.

Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute.

Human nature, with all its infirmities and depravation, is still capable of great things.

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country is my unalterable determination.