“We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.”

Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.

If conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.

Posterity – you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.

It is my wish to fill every moment of my time with some action of the mind which may contribute to the pleasure or the improvement of my fellow creatures.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Democracy, pure democracy, has at least its foundation in a generous theory of human rights.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

America, goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

Tyranny can scarcely be practiced upon a virtuous and wise people.

From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done.

Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release.

Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.

Can hope bloom in the shade? Can time give back what it takes away? I once saw the answers to life in your eyes; now I can remember the words to goodbye.

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.

There is nothing that making men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. True wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.

What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.