“We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.”

The higher state to which [America] seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.

Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.

Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.

Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.

Anytime you don’t want anything you get it.

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

You can’t increase prosperity by taxing success.

School is not the end but only the beginning of an education.

Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverance for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government.

Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control.

The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.

American ideals do not require to be changed so much as they require to be understood and applied.

There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence.

A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

If it were given to a man to see virtue’s reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue.

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.