HC

Henry Clay

59quotes

Quotes by Henry Clay

"
I would rather be right than President.
"
We have had good and bad Presidents, and it is a consoling reflection that the American Nation possesses such elements of prosperity that the bad Presidents cannot destroy it, and have been able to do no more than slightly to retard the public’s advancement.
"
How is it with the President? Is he powerless? He is felt from one extremity to the other of this vast Republic. By means of principles which he has introduced, and innovations which he has made in our institutions, alas! but too much countenanced by Congress and a confiding people, he exercises, uncontrolled, the power of the State. In.
"
A nation’s character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation’s inheritance. They awe foreign powers, they arouse and animate our own people.
"
I hope that it will yet be said, America is America’s best customer.
"
I’d rather be right than President.
"
The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.
"
The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers.
"
The time will come when winter will ask what you were doing all summer.
"
The imposition of taxes has its limits. There is a maximum which cannot be transcended. Suppose the citizen to be taxed by the general government to the utmost extent of his ability, or a thing as much as it can possibly bear, and the state imposes a tax at the same time, which authority is to take it?
Showing 1 to 10 of 59 results