The quote database

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests.

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.

The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.

Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.

Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result.

His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.

Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored.

In administering the laws of Congress I shall keep steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of the Executive power trusting thereby to discharge the functions of my office without transcending its authority.

The laws of the United States must be executed.

Education, then, is the safest and richest investment possible to man.

Nay, ’tis woman’s strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.

Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”

Teach them that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.

Let us then, here and now, recognize this force and resolve to make the most of it—not the boys less, but the girls more.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together.

If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery.

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging life which is the hardest test.

His capacity for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened to take less than his full time he characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal.

The brain can be disciplined by learning the habit of obedience.