To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.
Revolutions never go backwards.
To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it.
Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.
Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.
Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war.
Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.
On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
The keener the want the lustier the growth.
Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.
Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.
Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.
Insurrection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms.
War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.
Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!
Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.
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