Andrew Jackson Quotes

In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.

You are uneasy; you never sailed with me before, I see.

Too much praise cannot be bestowed on those who managed my artillery.

People are my religion/Because I believe in them.

The murderer only takes the life of the parent and leaves his character as a goodly heritage to his children, whilst the slanderer takes away his goodly reputation and leaves him a living monument to his children's disgrace.

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.

If the Union is once severed, the line of separation will grow wider and wider, and the controversies which are now debated and settled in the halls of legislation will then be tried in fields of battle and determined by the sword.

I am now eased in my finances and replenished in my wardrobe.

After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary.

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.

You must, to get through life well, practice industry with economy, never create a debt for anything that is not absolutely necessary, and if you make a promise to pay money at a day certain, be sure to comply with it. If you do not, you lay yourself liable to have your feelings injured and your reputation destroyed with the just imputation of violating your word.

Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people.

This spirit of mob-law is becoming as great an evil as a servile war.

All who wish to hand down to their children that happy republican system bequeathed to them by their revolutionary fathers, must now take their stand against this consolidating, corrupting money power, and put it down, or their children will become hewers of wood and drawers of water to this aristocratic ragocracy.

Do they think that I am such a damned fool as to think myself fit for President of the United States? No, sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way, but I am not fit to be President.

The safety of the republic being the supreme law, and Texas having offered us the key to the safety of our country from all foreign intrigues and diplomacy, I say accept the key ... and bolt the door at once.

Freemasonry is a moral order, instituted by virtuous men, with the praiseworthy design of recalling to our remembrance the most sublime truths, in the midst of the most innocent and social pleasures, founded on liberality, brotherly love and charity.

I have only two regrets:
I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun.

Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.

The individual who refuses to defend his rights when called by his government deserves to be a slave, and must be punished as an enemy of his country and a friend to her foe

Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government, are of high importance.

I find virtue to be found amongst the farmers of the country alone, not about courts, where courtiers dwell.

To extraordinary powers of labor, both mental and physical, he unites that tact and judgement which are requisite to the successful direction of such an office as that of Chief Magistrate of a free people.

When the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

When you get in debt you become a slave.

Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well.

I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.

It is from within, among yourselves
from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power
that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has committed to your keeping.

War is a blessing compared with national degradation.

If in madness of delusion, anyone shall lift his parricidal hand against this blessed union, the arms of thousands will be raised to save it, and the curse of millions will fall upon the head which may have plotted its destruction.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!

Disunion by force is treason.

Desperate courage makes One a majority.

Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found.

Were all the worshippers of the gold calf to memorialize me and request a restoration of the deposits I would cut my right hand from my body before I would do such an act. The gold calf may be worshipped by others but as for myself I serve the Lord.

Hemans gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men who would involve their country in civil wars, and all the evils in its train that they might reign & ride on its whirlwinds & direct the Storm The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom.

After eight years as President I have only two regrets: that I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.

It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce.

You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.

No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

I would sincerely regret, and which never shall happen whilst I am in office, a military guard around the President.

The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.

The great can protect themselves, but the poor and humble require the arm and shield of the law.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another.

Fear not, the people may be deluded for a moment, but cannot be corrupted.

When I have Suffered sufficiently, the Lord will then take me to himself

I am a Senator against my wishes and feelings, which I regret more than any other of my life.

I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.

Men do not get up and do mischief, without there is someone in the head of it.

No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism.

In a free government the demand for moral qualities should be made superior to that of talents.

Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty.

The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.

I am fearful that the paper system will ruin the state. Its demoralizing effects are already seen and spoken of everywhere. I therefore protest against receiving any of that trash.

Unless you become more watchful in your states and check the spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that ... the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.

Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.

To the victors belong the spoils.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.

It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.

Oh, do not cry - be good children and we will all meet in heaven.

Go to the Scriptures ... the joyful promises it contains will be a balsam to all your troubles.

There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness ... The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way.

Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission.

Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before whom I now stand, and who has kept us in His hands from the infancy of our Republic to the present day, that He will so overrule all my intentions and actions and inspire the hearts of my fellow-citizens that we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds and continue forever a united and happy people.

My political enemies I can freely forgive; but as for who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country
Doctor, that is a different case.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute.

Their object is disunion.

In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.

Being satisfied, from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirit as a drink is not only needless but hurtful; and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the community, we hereby express our convention that should the citizens of the United States, and especially ALL YOUNG MEN, discontinue entirely the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world.

Freemasonry is an institution calculated to benefit mankind.

Freemasonry is an establishment founded on the benevolent intention of extending and conferring mutual happiness upon the best and truest principles of moral life and social virtue.

[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.

His [the President's] earnest desire is, that you may perpetuated and preserved as a nation; and this he believes can only be doneand secured by your consent to remove to a country beyond the Mississippi ... Where you are, it is not possible you can live contented and happy.

I not only rejoice, but congratulate my beloved country Texas is reannexed, and the safety, prosperity, and the greatest interest of the whole Union is secured by this great and important national act.

It is a well-settled principle of the international code that where one nation owes another a liquidated debt which it refuses or neglects to pay the aggrieved party may seize on the property belonging to the other, its citizens or subjects, sufficient to pay the debt without giving just cause of war.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society - the farmers, mechanics, and laborers - who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.

It is pleasing to reflect that results so beneficial, not only to the States immediately concerned, but to the harmony of the Union, will have been accomplished by measures equally advantageous to the Indians. What the native savages become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without hope, and almost without thought.

The President is the direct representative of the American people and is elected by the people and responsible to them.

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer ... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

Although I could lament in the language and feelings of David for Absalom, I am constrained to say, peace to his manes. Let us weep for the living, and not for the dead.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.

Temporize not! It is always injurious.

Heaven will be heaven only if my wife is there.