Echoes

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

…And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

The man who dies rich dies disgraced.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

I believe that material wealth is an exceedingly valuable servant, and a particularly abhorrent master, in our National life. I think one end of government should be to achieve prosperity; but it should follow this end chiefly to serve an even higher and more important end - that of promoting the character and welfare of the average man. In the long run, and inevitably, the actual control of the government will be determined by the chief end which the government subserves. If the end and aim of government action is merely to accumulate general material prosperity, treating such prosperity as an end in itself and not as a means, then it is inevitable that material wealth and the masters of that wealth will dominate and control the course of national action. If, on the other hand, the achievement of material wealth is treated, not as an end of government, but as a thing of great value, it is true—so valuable as to be indispensable—but of value only in connection with the achievement of other ends, then we are free to seek through our government, and through the supervision of our individual activities, the realization of a true democracy. Then we are free to seek not only the heaping up of material wealth, but a wise and generous distribution of such wealth so as to diminish grinding poverty, and, so far as may be, to equalize social and economic no less than political opportunity.

Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Those who are fond of praising men to their faces are also fond of damning them behind their backs.

Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.

Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

I'm bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to market. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere.

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

Our country—this great republic—means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

The many are mean; only the few are noble.

It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.

Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.