Andrew Jackson Quotes

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.) ~ Jon Meacham

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error. ~ Andrew Jackson Davis

Her last words have been the law of my life:

Andrew, if I should not see you again, I wish you to remember and treasure up some things I have already said to you: in this world you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have friends. You can make friends by being honest, and you can keep them by being steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will in the long run expect as much from you as they give to you. To forget an obligation or be ungrateful for a kindness is a base crime-not merely a fault or a sin, but an actual crime. Men guilty of it sooner or later must suffer the penalty. In personal conduct be always polite but never obsequious. None will respect you more than you respect yourself. Avoid quarrels as long as you can without yielding to imposition. But sustain your manhood always. Never bring a suit in law for assault and battery or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man. Never wound the feelings of others. Never brook wanton outrage upon your own feelings. If you ever have to vindicate your feelings or defend your honor, do it calmly. If angry at first, wait until your wrath cools before you proceed. ~ Jon Meacham

In the 1830s, the forced removal of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles from the fertile lands of the southeastern United States, under the direction of President Andrew Jackson, amassed even more land for cotton cultivation and expansion of the wealth of white people. As Native Americans made the involuntary treks to what would become Indian Country or Oklahoma, white Americans dislocated approximately one million African Americans through the domestic slave trade, moving them from the Upper South to the Lower South and westward, destroying families, and severing community ties in order to create plantations and cultivate cotton. ~ Heather Andrea Williams

Desperate courage makes One a majority. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

To the victors belong the spoils. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

Twenty years earlier, he had shaped the faction opposed to Andrew Jackson into a political party. Its members became known as Whigs because just as the Whigs of England had objected to the unchecked power of the throne, the American Whigs resisted "King Andrew's" excessive assumption of authority. Abraham ~ David S. Heidler

The mythic American character is made up of the virtues of fairness, self-reliance, toughness, and honesty. Those virtues are generally stuffed into a six-foot-tall, dark-haired, can-do kind of guy who is at once a family man, attractive to strange women, carefree, stable, realistic, and whimsical. in the lore of America, that man lives on the Great Plains. he's from Texas, Dodge City, Cheyenne, the Dakotas, or somewhere in Montana. In fact, the seedbed of this American character, from the days of de Tocqueville through Andrew Jackson, Wyattt Earp, Pony Express riders, pioneers, and cowboys to modern caricatures played by actors such as Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne has aways been the frontier. It's a place with plenty of room to roam, great sunsets, clear lines between right and wrong, and lots of horses. It's also a place that does not exist and never has. The truth is that there has never been much fairness out here. ~ Dan O'Brien

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

If the Treasury Department should not remove Hamilton from the $10 bill, what should they do? The answer is fairly simple: Replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. ~ Eric Schneiderman

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

A blanket could be used to wipe away my tears. But it'd better be a blanket the size of America, because I've been crying since Andrew Jackson died. ~ Jarod Kintz

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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! ~ Andrew Jackson

Do you wish to make of your enemy a friend? Then become a friend to your enemy. ~ Andrew Jackson Davis

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

The United States of Andrew Jackson or George Washington is not the United States of Frederick Douglass or Sitting Bull. But we present our history from the perspective of the winners, from those in power ~ Chris Hedges

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

I am now eased in my finances and replenished in my wardrobe. ~ Andrew Jackson

Between his dueling and military career, Jackson had been shot so many times that scholars says he "rattled like a bag of marbles" when he walked as a result of all of the never-removed bullets taking up residence in his body. The pieces of shrapnel he carries around like internal medals of honor are about ten times larger than your balls and infinity times as armored. ~ Daniel O'Brien

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

He was the most contradictory of men. A champion of extending freedom and democracy to even the poorest of whites, Jackson was an unrepentant slaveholder. A sentimental man who rescued an Indian orphan on a battlefield to raise in his home, Jackson was responsible for the removal of Indian tribes from their ancestral lands. An enemy of Eastern financial elites and a relentless opponent of the Bank of the United States, which he believed to be a bastion of corruption, Jackson also promised to die, if necessary, to preserve the power and prestige of the central government. Like us and our America, Jackson and his America achieved great things while committing grievous sins. ~ Jon Meacham

Their object is disunion. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

People are my religion/Because I believe in them. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

Plant spacious parks in your cities, and loose their gates as wide as the morning, to the whole people. ~ Andrew Jackson Downing

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

Heaven will be heaven only if my wife is there. ~ Andrew Jackson

When you get in debt you become a slave. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

Man toils, and strives, and wastes his little life to claim
At last the transient glory of a splendid name, And have, perchance, in marble mockery a bust, Poised on a pedestal, above his sleeping dust. ~ Andrew Jackson Downing

He who owns a wood of proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the personal riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke pears, deserves to lose the respect of all sensible men. ~ Andrew Jackson Downing

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

The funeral of Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage was flawed when his pet parrot had to be removed because it kept squawking out the profanity Jackson had taught the foul fowl.20 ~ Craig Shirley

Temporize not! It is always injurious. ~ Andrew Jackson

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great Democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict Bunyan, the pale poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God! ~ Herman Melville

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

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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

Andrew Jackson was the first one to think up the idea to promise everybody that if they will vote for you, you will give them an office when you get it, and the more times they vote for you, the bigger the office. ~ Will Rogers

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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 ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

The first truly powerful and widespread impulse to anti-intellectualism in American politics was, in fact, given by the Jacksonian movement. Its distrust of expertise, its dislike for centralization, its desire to uproot the entrenched classes, and its doctrine that important functions were simple enough to be performed by anyone, amounted to a repudiation non only of the system of government by gentlemen which the nation had inherited from the eighteenth century, but also of the special value of the educated classes in civic life. ~ Richard Hofstadter

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

With a writer's eye, Irving detected Jackson's depths. As his admirers say, he is truly an old Roman-to which I would add, with a little dash of the Greek; for I suspect he is as knowing as I believe he is honest. ~ Jon Meacham

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances permit, but when the time for action has come, stop thinking. (Andrew Jackson) ~ Jon Meacham

Despite a legacy consisting of enough violence and death for twenty men, Jackson admitted to having two regrets on his deathbed: "I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't murder John C. Calhoun." In a life rich with murdering people for little-to-no reason, Jackson's only regret was that he didn't kill quite enough people. People like Calhoun, who, it should be noted, was Jackson's vice president. No one is safe from Jackson's wrath. ~ Daniel O'Brien

Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious. ~ Andrew Jackson Downing

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. ~ Andrew Jackson

George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all rode their wartime heroics into the White House. ~ Jeff Greenfield