John Sherman

Nations are now as much akin to each other as provinces were of old.

The tendency of the age is to break down all needless restrictions upon social and commercial intercourse.

The change is so slight with them that an enlightened self-interest will soon induce them to make it, especially if we make the greater change in our coinage.

We now produce the larger part of the gold and silver of the world, and cannot limit our coinage except by the wants of our people and the demands of commerce.

The United States is so large in extent, is so sparsely populated, and the price of labor is so much higher than in Europe, that we require more currency per capita.

A common gold standard will regulate silver coinage, of which the United States will furnish the greater part, especially for the Chinese trade.

Surely each commercial nation should be willing to yield a little to secure a gold coin of equal value, weight, and diameter, from whatever mint it may have been issued.

These coins are now exchangeable only at a considerable loss, and this exchange is a profit only to brokers and bankers.

Our gold dollar is certainly as good a unit of value as the franc; and so the English think of their pound sterling.

The subject has, however, excited the attention of several important commercial bodies in the United States, and the time is now so favorable that I feel quite sure that Congress will adopt any practical measure that will secure to the…

We may copy all these, but it will require a century to develop like progress in America.

Though it is a great manufacturing city, chiefly in articles of luxury requiring the highest skill, yet it is also a most beautiful city in its location, its buildings, public and private, its museums and opera houses, its parks and…

If I was not an American I certainly would be a Frenchman.

The debt of gratitude for the assistance of France in our War of the Revolution is never forgotten by a true American, and Frenchmen are always proud of their share in establishing the independence of America.

It is impossible for an American to visit Paris without enjoyment and instruction.

If the leaders in this pageant could have foreseen what happened three years later--that King William would be an emperor, that Bonaparte would be his prisoner and Eugenie a refugee from republican France--the order of the march would have…

What a pity, he said, it would have been if so great a country as the United States had been disrupted on account of slavery.

Bismarck was recognized as a great statesman and, although far less prominent than he afterwards became, he was the one man in Germany whom I desired to see or know.

I have attended many exhibitions, but never one before or since that combined such magnitude and completeness in size, form and location, and such simplicity in arrangement and details, as the Paris Exposition of 1867.

I know of no place where the entrance into society is so open and free as in Washington.

The quiet and rest, the view of the ocean, the sense of solitude, the possibility of danger, all these broken a little by a quiet game of whist or an interesting book--this I call happiness.

I can imagine no life more pleasing than a tranquil, but not too tranquil, sea, with a good ship well manned, with companions you like, but not too many.

The law, in my opinion, ought to be a permanent one, so that the will of the people, as evidenced by the elections, may be promptly responded to.

Agriculture has furnished the great body of our exports, yet this employment had no representative in any of the departments except a clerk in the Patent Office.

This is especially true of the United States, where the majority of its inhabitants are engaged in farming.