Calvin Coolidge Quotes

I come from election, I come from the people. I owe gratitude to our people. I do everything for the good of the country and the people.

The wisdom, the duty of mild government I conceive to be the great but disregarded lesson of all history.

I go by the great republican principle, that the people will have the virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom [to the offices of government].

I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line - democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.

Conservatives believe government's principal functions are the preservation of freedom and removal of restraints on the individual. Liberalism's ascent in the first two-thirds of this century reflected the new belief that government should also confer capacities on individuals. Liberalism's decline in the final third of this century has reflected doubts about whether government can be good at that, or whether government that is good at that is good for the nation's character.

In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.

Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?

Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men; on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.

In the end the problem isn't that you have the wrong sort of government for the People, but that you have the wrong sort of People.

Politics are the divine science, after all.

Now, and ever, I shall do all in my power for peace, consistently with the maintenance of government.

Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."

Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.

Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.

Good governance depends on ability to take responsibility by both administration as well as people.

Forms of government matter, in my opinion. It matters how -- the nature of the government in which people live.

I'm a Democrat, and there are an important group of things only the government can do. But let us be clear that for most of the world, what they most need is less government.

He was uniformly of an opinion which, though not a popular one, he was ready to aver, that the right of governing was not property, but a trust.

Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.

Stop talking about how you care about people. Show me something. Show me a policy. Show me a policy where you take responsibility.

America has but one main problem -- the character of the men and women it shall produce.

Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.

Politics and life go hand in hand.

It is a great privilege, as well as our responsibility, to pray for our government leaders.

A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.