110+ Daniel Webster Quotes On Constitution, Bible And Dartmouth

Daniel Webster was an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate. He was a prominent figure in the Whig Party, and was a well-known orator who defended the Constitution and argued for the preservation of the Union. He is also known for his famous "Second Reply to Hayne" speech, in which he defended the Union and argued for a strong federal government. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Daniel Webster on constitution, bible, dartmouth.

Top 10 Daniel Webster Quotes

1. Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
2. 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
3. The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.
4. The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
5. God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
6. 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.
7. Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.
8. Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves.
9. A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.
10. There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

Daniel Webster Short Quotes

• Keep cool; anger is not an argument.
• 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.
• There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.
• There is always room at the top.
• Wisdom begins at the end.
• Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
• How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
• What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.
• The past is at least secure.

Daniel Webster Quotes About Constitution

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. — Daniel Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

The hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder forever. — Daniel Webster

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? — Daniel Webster

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

We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land - nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution. — Daniel Webster

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? — Daniel Webster

One country, one constitution, one destiny. — Daniel Webster

If the States were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name. — Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Quotes About Bible

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. — Daniel Webster

Philosophical argument has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that was in me; but my heart has always assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be reality. — Daniel Webster

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

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

The bible fits man for life and prepares him for death — Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Quotes About Liberty

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue. — Daniel Webster

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint. — Daniel Webster

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power. — Daniel Webster

Let our object be - our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument - not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever. — Daniel Webster

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

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint. — Daniel Webster

If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have. — Daniel Webster

No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country. — Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Quotes About Earth

Justice is the great interest of man on earth. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions. — Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Quotes About Labor

Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money. — Daniel Webster

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread. — Daniel Webster

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

They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-doing machines. — Daniel Webster

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves. — Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster Famous Quotes And Sayings

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution of your country and the government established under it. Leave evils which exist in some parts of the country, but which are beyond your control, to the all-wise direction of an over-ruling Providence. Perform those duties which are present, plain and positive. Respect the laws of your country. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

It is no monopoly in any other sense than as a man's own house is a monopoly. But a man's right to his own invention is a very different matter. It is no more a monopoly for him to possess that, than to possess his own homestead . — Daniel Webster

Gentlemen, the character of Washington is among the most cherished contemplations of my life. It is a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining without twinkling or obscuration, with clear, steady, beneficent light. — Daniel Webster

The world is governed more by appearances than by realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. — Daniel Webster

The man is free who is protected from injury. — Daniel Webster

Our profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it; it is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money catching. — Daniel Webster

If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. — Daniel Webster

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American. — Daniel Webster

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. — Daniel Webster

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

I see nothing in it new and valuable. What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable. — Daniel Webster

Now is the time when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen; the legislature is in session and no man's property is safe. — Daniel Webster

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

Mind is the great lever of all things. — Daniel Webster

Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. — Daniel Webster

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. — Daniel Webster

The farmers are the founders of civilization. — Daniel Webster

Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights. — Daniel Webster

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

It is, Sir, as I have said, a small College, And yet, there are those who love it. — Daniel Webster

If all my talents and powers were to be taken from me by some unscrutable Providence, and I had my choice of keeping but one, I would unhesitatingly ask for be allowed to keep the Power of Speaking, for through it I would quickly recover all the rest. — Daniel Webster

The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly; in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly. — Daniel Webster

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable. — Daniel Webster

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may. — Daniel Webster

A mass of men equals a mass of opinions. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

I still live. Pretty. — Daniel Webster

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work on brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on mens immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity. — Daniel Webster

Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that — Daniel Webster

A representative form of government rests nor more on political contributions than on those laws which regulate the descent and transmission of property. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy. — Daniel Webster

All creeds are fallible and uncertain evidences of evangelical piety. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

What do we want with this vast, worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country? — Daniel Webster

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation. — Daniel Webster

Instruct the mothers of the French people. — Daniel Webster

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession — Daniel Webster

Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country, every wave rolls it and gives it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce of ideas, there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make up the minds and opinions of the age. — Daniel Webster

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

Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will' undertake its safety, and nothing can save it, if they leave that safety in any hands but their own. — Daniel Webster

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. — Daniel Webster

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form. — Daniel Webster

..if the Northern states refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side. — Daniel Webster

It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government. — Daniel Webster

Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet. — Daniel Webster

Life Lessons by Daniel Webster

1. Daniel Webster taught the importance of hard work and dedication, as he worked tirelessly to support his constituents and the nation.
2. He also showed the value of compromise, as he sought to find common ground between opposing sides.
3. Finally, he exemplified the power of resilience and perseverance, never giving up in the face of adversity.