There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and e...xerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chiefly ...regarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The policy of this country is a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to... any European power.... The capital invested by corporations or citizens of other countries in such an enterprise must in a great degree look for protection to one or more of the great powers of the world. No European power can intervene for such protection without adopting measures on this continent which the United States would deem wholly inadmissible. If the protection of the United States is relied upon, The United States must exercise such control as will enable this country to protect its national interests.... An interoceanic canal across the American Isthmus ... would be the great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and our Pacific shores, and virtually a part of the coastline of the United States. Our merely commercial interest in it is greater than that of all other countries, while its relations to our power and prosperity as a nation, to our means of defense, our unity, peace, and safety, are matters of paramount concern to the people of the United States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind--the mind of a fighter--in wh...ich the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow... of the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the res...t. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Un...ion without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If ther...e be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divi...ne institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more I have studied American history and the more clearly I have seen what the problems are. I do believe that the common deno...minator of our great men in public life has not been mere allegiance to one political party but the disinterested devotion with which they have strived to serve the whole country. And the relative unimportance that they have ascribed to politics compared with the paramount importance of Government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »