Henry Clay citations

Henry Clay, né le 12 avril 1777 dans le comté de Hanover et mort le 29 juin 1852 à Washington, D.C., est un homme politique américain, notamment sénateur et représentant pour le Parti républicain-démocrate élu dans le Kentucky à de multiples reprises.

Figure majeure de la politique américaine de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, il fut l'auteur des célèbres compromis du Missouri et de 1850, ce qui lui a valu le surnom de « Grand pacificateur » . Il est par ailleurs secrétaire d'État des États-Unis dans l'administration J.Q. Adams, de 1825 à 1829. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. avril 1777 – 29. juin 1852
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Henry Clay: 23   citations 0   J'aime

Henry Clay: Citations en anglais

“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 the people.”

Speech at the public dinner at Fowler's Garden, Lexington, Kentucky, May 16, 1829, printed in Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. 36 (1829), at p. 399.

“It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war.”

Speech on the Increase of the Navy, House of Representatives (22 January 1812).
Contexte: Sir, if you wish to avoid foreign commerce; give up all your prosperity. It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war. Commerce engenders collision, collision war, and war, the argument supposes, leads to despotism. Would the councils of that statesman be deemed who would recommend that the nation should be unarmed—that in the art of war, the material spirit, and martial exercises, should be prohibited—…—and that the great body of the people should be taught that the national happiness was to be found in perpetual peace alone? No, sir.

“Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.”

Reported in The Clay Code, or Text-Book of Eloquence, a Collection of Axioms, Apothegms, Sentiments … Gathered from the Public Speeches of Henry Clay, ed. G. Vandenhoff (1844), p. 93.

“All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.”

Speech on the Emancipation of South America], House of Representatives (24 March 1818); The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory

“I have no commiseration for princes. My sympathies are reserved for the great mass of mankind ….”

Speech on the Line of the Perdido, Senate (25 December 1810).

“How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!”

Letter (4 December 1801), printed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (2002)

“I would rather be right than be President.”

Speech, Senate (1850), referring to the Compromise Measures.

“If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.”

Speech on the Increase of the Navy, House of Representatives (22 January 1812).

“The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must."”

Speech on the New Army Bill, House of Representatives, (8 January 1813), paraphrasing Josiah Quincy III's "amicably if they can, violently if they must"; The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory

“An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.”

Speech on the Emancipation of South America http://www.bartleby.com/268/9/5.html, House of Representatives (24 March 1818); The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory

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