Henry Clay Quotes

27 quotes in 351 categories

• Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
• The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.
• Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of…
• I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any…
• Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
• Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.
• All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.
• The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites…
• The time will come when winter will ask what you were doing all summer.
• I'd rather be right than President.
• An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.
• A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers, they arouse and…
• There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the…
• If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.
• I had rather be right than be President.
• How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!
• I have no commiseration for princes. My sympathies are reserved for the great mass of mankind ….
• Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.
• The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.
• I cannot believe that the killing of 2,000 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies a person for the various difficult and complicated duties of the Presidency.

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