Quotes by Benjamin Harrison

“No other people have a government more worthy of their respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise and labor.”

“The bud of victory is always in the truth.”

“There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws.”

“To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.”

“Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also. . .”

“We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.”

“We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.”

“I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.”

“Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure.”

“Great lives never go out; they go on.”

“I knew that my staying up would not change the [election] result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a nights rest was best in any event.”

“I like the woodwork on the stairway, the way those men made everything so intricate.”

“I dont think people ought to take the elevator if they (can) walk, because they dont get to see the stairway,”

“The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mischievous.... No poor man was ever made richer or happier by it. It is quite as illogical to despise a man because he is rich as because he is poor. Not what a man has, but what he is, settles his class. We can not right matters by taking from one what he has honestly acquired to bestow upon another what he has not earned.”

Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.

In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others.

What saddens me most is that some poor woman out there has to be Garths wife. And his three children -- oh, his poor three children. What a despicable human being this guy is.

There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

The bud of victory is always in the truth.