“However much we differed with them while public enemies, and were at war, we must admit that they fought gallantly for the preservation of the government which we fought to destroy, which is now ours, was that of our fathers, and must be that of our children. Though our love for that government was for a while supplanted by the exasperation springing out of a sense of violated rights and the conflict of battle, yet our love for free government, justly administered, has not perished, and must grow strong in the hearts of brave men who have learned to appreciate the noble qualities of the true soldier.”

“Our people, small in numbers, have fought during their whole existence. [The British] have fought too, but the wars of our two people have been of different characters. Our country has been invaded many times, but we have always fought the enemies, we have driven them out and we have never mixed blood with them…”

“Abolitionism proposes to destroy the right and extinguish the principle of self-government for which our forefathers waged a seven years' bloody war, and upon which our system of free government is founded.”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“First, America must have a strong defense. We must never forget that our national defense is about much more than the land within our borders. Just as we fought and conquered totalitarianism during World War Two — just as we fought and conquered communism during the Cold War — we are defending the idea of freedom itself.”

“God is not satisfied if we preserve the love we owe our neighbour; we must preserve our neighbour in the love he ought to have for us.”

“The war has revealed an overpowering national instinct. The conflicting theories of the exact nature and limitations of our government had blinded the shrewdest minds to the fact that we were a nation, with all the feelings and instincts of a nation, and that our quarrels must be settled inside and not outside of the Union.”

“We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.”

“Distinguish we must between the right of the people the world over to be free and our obligation to free them. We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because the ostensible upholding of the negative rights of the world's citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—our lives, our liberties and our livelihoods. A just government’s duty is to its own citizens first.”

“Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it.”