Government ... thought [it] could transform the country through massive national programs, but often the programs did not work. To...o often they only made things worse. In our rush to accomplish great deeds quickly, we trampled on sound principles of restraint and endangered the rights of individuals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater indiv...idual freedom and self-reliance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There can only be one Commander-in-Chief. In these times, crises cannot be managed and wars cannot be waged by committee. To the e...ars of the world, the President speaks for the nation. While he is of course ultimately accountable to Congress, the courts, and the people, he and his emissaries must not be handicapped in advance in their relations with foreign governments as has sometimes happened in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now ...include my little dog Fala. Well, of course I don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, learning that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him--at a cost to the tax payers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars--his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now the [Utah] Territory is virtually under the theocratic government of the Mormon Church. The union of church and state is compl...ete. The result is the usual one, the usurpation or absorption of all temporal authority and power by the church. Polygamy and every other evil sanctioned by the church is safe. To destroy the temporal power of the Mormon Church is the end in view.... Mormonism as a sectarian idea is nothing, but as a system of government it is our duty to deal with it as an enemy to our institutions, and its supporters and leaders as criminals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I now have next to no hope of a restoration of the old Union.... If it is the settled and final judgment of any slave State that s...he cannot live in the Union, I should not think it wise or desirable to retain her by force, even if it could be done. But am I, therefore, to oppose the war? If it were a war of conquest merely, certainly I should oppose it.... But the war is forced on us. We cannot escape it. While ... perhaps in all the cotton-growing States, a deciding and controlling public judgment has deliberately declared against remaining in the Union, it is quite certain that in several States rebellious citizens are bent on forcing out of the Union States whose people are not in favor of secession.... If force had been employed to meet force, I believe several States now out of the Union would have remained in it.... The war ... for the defence of the capital, for the maintenance of the authority of the Government and the rights of the United States, I think is necessary, wise, and just.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »