While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue,... I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The decision of the Supreme Court in the income taxes cases deprived the National Government of a power which, by reasons of previ...ous decisions of the court, it was generally supposed that Government had. It is undoubtedly a power the National Government ought to have.... I therefore recommend to the Congress that both Houses, by a two-thirds vote, shall propose an amendment to the Constitution conferring the power to levy an income tax upon the National Government without apportionment among the States in proportion to population ... and second, the enactment, as part of the pending revenue measure, either as a substitute for, or in addition to, the inheritance tax, an excise tax upon all corporations, measured by 2 percent of their net income.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic i...s a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A Republican by principle and devotion, I will, until my death, oppose all Royalists ... and all enemies of my Government and the ...Republic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Governments like natural bodies have their time of growing perfection and declining, and according to their constitutions, some ho...ld out longer, and some decay sooner than otherse, but all in their beginnings and infancies are subject to so many infirmities and imperfections, that what Solomon said of a monarchy, "Woe to that kingdom whose prince is a child," may be more justly said of a new republic and we may with as much reason say, "Woe be to that people that live under a young government."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our system of government, in spite of Vietnam, Cambodia, CIA, Watergate, is still the best system of government on earth. And the ...greatest resource of all are the 215 million Americans who still have within us the strength, the character, the intelligence, the experience, the patriotism, the idealism, the compassion, the sense of brotherhood on which we can rely in the future to restore the greatness to our country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is an enormous chasm between the relatively rich and powerful people who make decisions in government, business, and finance... and our poorer neighbors who must depend on these decisions to alleviate the problems caused by their lack of power and influence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »