The quote database

It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service.

I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on.

The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present places.

If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility in the Executive for the America of tomorrow I should shrink from the burden.

The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope.

You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

If you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.

Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will.

If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty, at that point their usefulness ends.

If we would promise we must put ourselves in a position to perform our promise.

Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility.

We shall enter into any war with a full consciousness of the awful consequences that it always entails, whether successful or not, and we, of course, shall make every effort consistent with national honor and the highest national interest to avoid a resort to arms.

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.

Honesty, capacity, and industry are nowhere more indispensable than in public employment.

There are some national questions in the solution of which patriotism should exclude partisanship.

Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.

The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.

was it not obvious that flocks and herds were more ready to obey their keepers than men their rulers

Only it seems to me a grievous error in a ruler to quarrel with all his subjects at once.

Surely it is hardly fitting that the ruler should be baser than the ruled.

When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves.

With such aids and an honest purpose to do whatever is right, I hope to execute diligently, impartially, and for the best interests of the country the manifold duties devolved upon me.