“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“This principle can not be too definitely or emphatically proclaimed. American citizenship is a high estate. He who holds it is the peer of kings. It has been secured only by untold toil and effort. It will be maintained by no other method. It demands the best that men and women have to give. But it likewise awards to its partakers the best that there is on earth. To attempt to turn it into a thing of ease and inaction would be only to debase it. To cease to struggle and toil and sacrifice for it is not only to cease to be worthy of it but is to start a retreat toward barbarism. No matter what others may say, no matter what others may do, this is the stand that those must maintain who are worthy to be called Americans.”

– Calvin Coolidge (July 4th, 1872 – January 5th, 1933),
from “Freedom and its Obligations”, 1924

“Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is interwoven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries. By the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other. Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No, he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social compact; he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of universal charity; he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future times, by the impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of these principles,

‘Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign.’

They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space; he is no longer a ‘puny insect shivering at a breeze’; he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.”

– John Quincy Adams,
excerpt from his “Oration at Plymouth”, December 22nd, 1802

*Portrait of John Quincy Adams by Charles Robert Leslie, 1816 (source)

“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.” 

– Ronald Reagan

“It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.”

– Teddy Roosevelt

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”

– Mark Twain

*Photo credit

“In the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.”

– Josiah Gilbert Holland

“A man without religion or spiritual vision is like a captain who finds himself in the midst of an uncharted sea, without compass, rudder and steering wheel. He never knows where he is, which way he is going and where he is going to land.”

– William J. H. Boetcker 

“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

– Samuel Adams

*The County Election by George Caleb Bingham, 1846 (source)

“In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.”

– George Mason