James Buchanan quotes:

The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.

If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.

I am the last President of the United States!

To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.

If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country.

What is right and what is practicable are two different things.

Building on the public's unwillingness to act on principle in support of market solutions to apparent problems, whether real or imagined, these interest groups secure arbitrary restrictions on voluntary exchanges and, in the process, secure rents for their members while reducing both the liberties and economic well being of other members of the economic nexus, both domestically and internationally.

The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.

Our union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.

The Government of the United States possesses no power whatever over the question of religion.

There is nothing stable but Heaven and the Constitution.

Abstract propositions should never be discussed by a legislative body.

The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

Whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.

All the friends that I loved and wanted to reward are dead, and all the enemies that I hated and I had marked out for punishment are turned to my friends.

The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union

Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.

I have gone wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them.

I like the noise of democracy.

The distribution of patronage of the Government is by far the most disagreeable duty of the President.