Daniel Webster: Trending quotes

Daniel Webster trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection

Daniel Webster: 124 quotes6 likes

“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.”

On Mr. Justice Story (September 12, 1845); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 300

“Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.”

Speech (2 April 1824); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iii, page 141

“The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.”

The Dignity and Importance of History http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dwebster/speeches/dignity-history.html (23 February 1852)

“If there be any thing in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.”

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33

“Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.”

Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 146

“I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.”

Letter (April 1851)

“I still live.”

Last words (24 October 1852)

“The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.”

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 102

“From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.”

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 93

“The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”

Second Reply to Hayne (1830)

“In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future…. And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I — I also — am an American!"”

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 107

“Fearful concatenation of circumstances.”

Argument on the murder of Captain White (1830)

“The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing.”

Second Reply to Hayne (1830)

“I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand upon it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."”

Speech at Marshfield, Massachusetts (1 September 1848); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), p. 433
Confer Henry Brougham's "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable." (The Edinburgh Review, The Work of Thomas Young, c. 1802)

“Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.”

Speech (July 25 and 27, 1846); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. V, p. 187

“It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,—Independence now and Independence forever.”

Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 136

“The civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.”

Source: Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825), p. 74

“The law: It has honored us; may we honor it.”

Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 394

“Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”

On the Old Man of the Mountain

“Sea of upturned faces.”

Speech (30 September 1842); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, page 117