Daniel Webster quotes:

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  • We passed a bill in 1997, signed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, which created a pilot program for a novel experiment called Florida Virtual School. The notion of children using a computer for a classroom and reporting to virtual teachers wasn't exactly mainstream thinking in those days.

  • The true value of having Florida Virtual School in this mix is that it creates a gold standard for all providers to meet if they hope to compete for Florida students. This program raises the bar for everybody, even the traditional public schools. And that benefits all our children.

  • During its first year of operation, Florida Virtual School had 77 students. The next year, it had 476 students; then 2,489 students the year after that.

  • Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.

  • God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

  • Power tends to protect itself merely to maintain its own status and control. Principle gives up power for the sake of creating the best public policy.

  • It's different from Washington in that in the legislature, you have to go home and have a job and actually make a living on your own. That gives you a different perspective.

  • It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.

  • Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.

  • There's a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God's hand, and we're in big time trouble.

  • Power focuses on self-preservation; principle focuses on making ideas successful.

  • Power says if you are a committee chairman, your idea is good only because you have got power.

  • Wisdom begins at the end.

  • A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

  • No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

  • If you need a door kicked in, just call, and we'll kick it. Now, it may not always be the answer you want, but you will get an answer.

  • A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.

  • The only way to improve the GOP brand and make good public policy is to fix the process. This requires transforming the way Congress does business.

  • You lay out a plan and - say a three-year plan or a two-year plan - and say, 'This is what we can do. We can do the transportation packages, like the highway bill and the water bill, and we can do some of these other areas - a farm bill - whatever it is, we lay out a schedule, and we put that committee to work to do that.'

  • What really promotes business in this country is liberty, not demand for information.

  • You have got to clean your own house first before you tell other people that they aren't doing it right.

  • Every member of Congress deserves a seat at the table to be involved in the process. I will continue fighting for this to become a reality in Washington, and will be running for speaker of the House.

  • My expectations are not in any future event. I would rather just be prepared for whatever might take place.

  • I found a mistake in a rule. They addressed the wrong rule number... I pointed it out, did an amendment, and everybody was happy after that.

  • Once we relieve them from sanctions, their economy opens up, and they can sell oil and pistachios and whatever else they sell around the world. That was why Iran needed a deal. Everyone knows they fund terrorism around the world. Having that extra money will add a lot of problems and create a lot more hot spots.

  • There are amendments never offered, there are bills never heard, that are basically killed because of the process.

  • Parents like options when it comes to their children's education. And they respond to quality.

  • I'm not an angry kind of person. What I am is a principled person.

  • What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality.

  • Principle says it's not who put forth an idea. It's not the position of the person who put forth an idea; it's not the longevity of the person or the party of the person. That's not what it is at all. In a power system, that's the way it works. But in a principle system, it's what it says.

  • Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

  • The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

  • We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people.

  • We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

  • Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

  • We're not even supposed to have a break in August if we have not passed the appropriations bills. It's in the House rules.

  • Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.

  • I have one desire: That is to have a principle-based, member-driven Congress. Period. That's what I want.

  • Let's take up the most important issues first. Let's take up the reauthorizations first; let's take up the appropriations bill first, not wait until four days beforehand - no one has mentioned anything, and, all of a sudden, somebody looks at their watch and says, 'Hey, in four days, the government is going to run out of money.'

  • The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.

  • My job was to get a fair and open hearing to all ideas.

  • We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem. The less we spend, the more jobs we have the potential to create.

  • I've been a speaker. I've been a majority leader. I've been a minority leader. Those are the sort of things I don't need any more.

  • One country, one constitution, one destiny.

  • If you push down that pyramid of power and spread out the base, every member gets a chance to file their bill and have it heard and file their amendment and have it heard, as opposed to the system that we have now, which closes out, closes down bills, limits debate, and so forth.

  • The voters in District 8 shared our vision that Washington is broken, and we're going to go up there and fix it.

  • Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

  • The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.

  • I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.

  • I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

  • Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

  • Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

  • There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

  • A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  • Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  • Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

  • The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

  • Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

  • On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

  • I am committed against every thing which in my judgment, may weaken, endanger, or destroy (the Constitution) ... and especially against all extension of Executive power; and I am committed against any attempt to rule the free people of this country by the power and the patronage of the Government itself....

  • The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

  • A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation.

  • Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from...the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.

  • The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly - in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly.

  • Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders.

  • He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United States, as it burst forth from the conceptions of Alexander Hamilton.

  • Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

  • There is always room at the top.

  • If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

  • If we abide by the principles taught by the Bible, our country will go on prospering.

  • Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.

  • Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

  • The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people

  • One country, one constitution, one destiny

  • [I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity

  • There is no refuge from confession but suicide and suicide is confession

  • Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

  • An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

  • We have a lot of talented people in this Congress, and we can avoid a lot of unintended consequences if we just included them.

  • I would like to give evidence we can lead. And I think the only way we can do that is to unify the diversity of the party.

  • A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

  • There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange.

  • We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people

  • I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

  • If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.

  • I have a problem with the way the House is run. I believe that a few people at the top of a pyramid of power have controlled this place for a long time.

  • The process for producing public policy in Congress is flawed. The process itself kills policy ideas through the bypassing of the rules and procedural decisions that limit discussion.

  • I'm a plodder, not a planner.

  • I'm a homing pigeon. When I'm in Tallahassee, I give everything I have to being, hopefully, the best legislator I can be. When I'm home, I'm home. I try to not do legislative stuff. That brings a balance to life.

  • When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

  • My whole deal is I want to have a principle-based, member-driven caucus.

  • I've never hidden my faith, but there are only a couple of issues I would die for. There are a few others I would dig my heels in on, and I've told my caucus that what they see is what they get.

  • I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

  • Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don't like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel.

  • Some people have been talking about - every place I go, they bring up the issue of foreign aid. I go, 'You can't get rid of all foreign aid.'

  • How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

  • If principles don't determine what you are going to pass or do, then power will.

  • I was Speaker of the House in Florida, first Republican speaker in 120 years. And I totally dismantled the way this House worked and turned it around to what I believe is right.

  • The key is - I'll say the key - number one, I pray every day.

  • There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters

  • The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

  • IF WE AND OUR POSTERITY SHALL BE TRUE TO THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, IF WE AND THEY SHALL LIVE ALWAYS IN THE FEAR OF GOD AND SHALL RESPECT HIS COMMANDMENTS, IF WE AND THEY SHALL MAINTAIN JUST MORAL SENTIMENTS AND SUCH CONSCIENTIOUS CONVICTIONS OF DUTY AS SHALL CONTROL THE HEART AND LIFE, WE MAY HAVE THE HIGHEST HOPES OF THE FUTURE FORTUNES OF OUR COUNTRY. OUR COUNTRY WILL GO ON PROSPERING.

  • The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

  • If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest

  • The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow - man.

  • There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another... If property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property.

  • Good intentions will always be pleaded, for every assumption of power; but they cannot justify it ... It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended.

  • Faith puts God between us and our circumstances.

  • In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution.

  • It is simple to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and private gain. It is more comfortable to sit content in the easy approval of friends and of neighbours than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs. It is easier to fall in step with the slogans of others than to march to the beat of the internal drummer - to make and stand on judgements of your own. And it far easier to accept and to stand on the past, than to fight for the answers of the future

  • We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.

  • If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

  • Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

  • The man is free who is protected from injury.

  • Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.

  • Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American. I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.

  • Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.

  • Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.

  • There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

  • No power but Congress can declare war, but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?

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