The quote database

To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen.

Our answer is this: a denial of constitutionally protected rights demands judicial protection; our oath and our office require no less of us.

Our constitutional system amply provides for the protection of minorities by means other than giving them majority control of state legislatures.

The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the fund of corruption.

Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion.

Baffled, discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it will be only the dearer to me.

The breakfast was eaten in silence, the women humbled with a sense of their helplessness, and the men gratified with a sense of their power.

Poverty and ignorance are the parents of intemperance, and that vice will never be suppressed until the burdens of life are equally shared by all.

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist.

Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities.

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense.

To state the problem is to recall the truth that no single principle can answer all of life's complexities.

Such exclusion goes over 'the very brink of constitutional power' and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.

Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people.

An Administration would be unworthy of confidence at home or respect abroad should it cease to be influenced by the conviction that no apparent advantage can be purchased at a price so dear as that of national wrong or dishonor.

Preeminently, the power of our advocacy reposes in our example; but no example, be it remembered, can be powerful for lasting good, whatever apparent advantages may be gained, which is not based upon eternal principles of right and justice.

The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.

Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.

Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families.

Brothers and sisters we were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers.

The plea for this outrage was then, as it is always, the tyrant's plea of necessity.

It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans.

Great nations like great men must keep their word.