Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
John C. Calhoun
21 quotes
“Protection and patriotism are reciprocal.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1811 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Representatives (12 December 1811)
“The neighboring tribes are becoming daily less warlike, and more helpless and dependent on us … [T]hey have, in a great measure, ceased to be an object of terror, and have become that of commiseration.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1818 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the House of Representatives (5 December 1818)
“The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the U.S. Senate (15 February 1833)
“The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (13 February 1835)
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (27 May 1836); this is the source of the phrase, "Cohesive power of public plunder
“I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good. A positive good.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In 1837
“Many in the South once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1838 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Regarding slavery (1838), as quoted in Brother Against Brother: The War Begins, (The Civil War series) vol. 1, William C. Davis, New York, NY, Time-Life Books, (1983) p. 40
“Our well-founded claim, grounded on continuity, has greatly strengthened, during the same period, by the rapid advance of our population toward the territory — its great increase, especially in the valley of the Mississippi — as well as the greatly increased facility of passing to the territory by more accessible routes, and the far stronger and rapidly-swelling tide of population that has recently commenced flowing into it.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Richard Pakenham, British minister to the United States, concerning the boundary dispute between the two countries (3 September 1844)
“I am a Southern man and a slaveholder. A kind and merciful one, I trust, and none the worse for being a slaveholder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality, one inch of what belongs to us as members of this republic! What! Acknowledged inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority!”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the U.S. Senate (19 February 1847)
“It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Senate (January 1848)
“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious, and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the U.S. Senate (12 August 1849)
“The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Disquisition on Government (1851), p. 90
“If it be conceded, as it must by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign power is divided between the states and general government, and that the former holds its reserved rights, in the same high sovereign capacity, which the latter does its delegated rights; it will be impossible to deny to the states the right of deciding on the infraction of their rights, and the proper remedy to be applied for the correction. The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty of which the states cannot be divested, without losing their sovereignty itself; and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is in reality not to divide at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the general government, (it matters not by what department it be exercised,) is in fact to constitute it one great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to reduce the states to mere corporations.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John C. Calhoun, Exposition and Protest, Reported by the Special Committee of the House of Representatives, on the Tariff; Read and Ordered to Be Printed, Dec. 19th, 1828 (D. W. Sims, State Printer, 1829), 30
“I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or, submit it to have their paramount interests sacrifices, their domestick [sic] institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves and children reduced to wretchedness. Thus situated, the denial of the right of the State to interpose constitutionally in the last resort, more alarms the thinking, than all the other causes; and however strange it may appear, the more universally the state is condemned, and her right denied, the more resolute she is to assert her constitutional powers lest the neglect to assert should be considered a practical abandonment of them, under such circumstances.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter, September 11, 1830, quoted in Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States' Rights and the Nullification Crisis (Oxford University Press, 1987), 193, 211, 214
“I cannot think in the present state of parties of entering again on the political arena. I would but waste my strength and exhaust my time, without adding to my character, or rendering service to the country, or advancing the cause for which I have so long contended. I feel no disgust nor do I feel disposed to complain of any one. On the contrary, I am content, and willing to end my public life now. In looking back, I see nothing to regret, and little to correct. My interest in the prosperity of the country, and the success of our peculiar and sublime political system when well understood, remain without abatement, and will do so till my last breath; and I shall ever stand prepared to serve the country, whenever I shall see reasonable prospect of doing so.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Duff Green (10 February 1844), in Correspondence of John C. Calhoun (1900) edited by William Pinkney Starke, p. 569
“The cords that bind the States together are not only many, but various in character. Some are spiritual or ecclesiastical; some political; others social... The strongest are those of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature, consisted in the unity of the great religious denominations, all of which originally embraced the whole Union. All these denominations, with the exception, perhaps, of the Catholics, were organized very much upon the principle of our political institutions. Beginning with smaller meetings, corresponding with the political divisions of the country, their organization terminated in one great central assemblage, corresponding very much with the character of Congress. At these meetings the principal clergymen and lay members of the respective denominations, from all parts of the Union, met to transact business relating to their common concerns. It was not confined to what appertained to the doctrines and discipline of the respective denominations, but extended to plans for disseminating the Bible, establishing missionaries, distributing tracts, and of establishing presses for the publication of tracts, newspapers, and periodicals, with a view of diffusing religious information, and for the support of the doctrines and creeds of the denomination. All this combined contributed greatly to strengthen the bonds of the Union.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Subject of Slavery (1850)
“We now begin to experience the danger of admitting so great an error (all men are created equal) to have a place in the declaration of our independence. For a long time it lay dormant; but in the process of time it began to germinate, and produce its poisonous fruits. It had strong hold on the mind of Mr. Jefferson, the author of that document, which caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the former, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the latter; and that to deprive them of it was unjust and immoral.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on the Oregon Bill, 1848
“I assume, as an incontestable fact, that man is so constituted as to be a social being. His inclinations and wants, physical and moral, irresistibly impel him to associate with his kind; and he has, accordingly, never been found, in any age or country, in any state other than the social. In no other, indeed, could he exist; and in no other—were it possible for him to exist—could he attain to a full development of his moral and intellectual faculties, or raise himself, in the scale of being, much above the level of the brute creation. I next assume, also, as a fact not less incontestable, that, while man is so constituted as to make the social state necessary to his existence and the full development of his faculties, this state itself cannot exist without government. The assumption rests on universal experience. In no age or country has any society or community ever been found, whether enlightened or savage, without government of some description.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Disquisition on Government (1851)
“To the Infinite Being, the Creator of all, belongs exclusively the care and superintendence of the whole. He, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, has allotted to every class of animated beings its condition and appropriate functions; and has endowed each with feelings, instincts, capacities, and faculties, best adapted to its allotted condition. To man, he has assigned the social and political state, as best adapted to develop the great capacities and faculties, intellectual and moral, with which he has endowed him; and has, accordingly, constituted him so as not only to impel him into the social state, but to make government necessary for his preservation and well-being.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Disquisition on Government (1851)
“It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike—a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving—and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it. Nor is it any disparagement to liberty, that such is, and ought to be the case. On the contrary, its greatest praise—its proudest distinction is, that an all-wise Providence has reserved it, as the noblest and highest reward for the development of our faculties, moral and intellectual. A reward more appropriate than liberty could not be conferred on the deserving—nor a punishment inflicted on the undeserving more just, than to be subject to lawless and despotic rule.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Disquisition on Government (1851)
“Such a state [of individual freedom and equality] is purely hypothetical. It never did, nor can exist; as it is inconsistent with the preservation and perpetuation of the race. It is, therefore, a great misnomer to call it the state of nature. Instead of being the natural state of man, it is, of all conceivable states, the most opposed to his nature—most repugnant to his feelings, and most incompatible with his wants. His natural state is, the social and political—the one for which his Creator made him, and the only one in which he can preserve and perfect his race. As, then, there never was such a state as the, so called, state of nature, and never can be, it follows, that men, instead of being born in it, are born in the social and political state; and of course, instead of being born free and equal, are born subject, not only to parental authority, but to the laws and institutions of the country where born, and under whose protection they draw their first breath.”
John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) said by 1850 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Disquisition on Government (1851)