United States Ambassadors To Great Britain And The United Kingdom

"Your mission was, to be a model for all other governments and for all other less favored nations, to adhere to the most elevated principles of political morality, to apply all your faculties to the gradual improvement of your own institutions and social state, and, by your example, to exert a moral influence most beneficial to mankind at large. Instead of this, an appeal has been made to your worst passions; to cupidity, to the thirst of unjust aggrandizement by brutal force; to the love of military fame and of false glory...The attempt is made to make you abandon the lofty position which your fathers occupied, to substitute for it the political morality and heathen patriotism of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity."

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. ... [I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

"The democratic principle on which this nation was founded should not be restricted to the political process but should be applied to the industrial operation as well."

"Governmental prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves."

"Remember that the United States is only interested in Britain insofar as Britain is a player in Europe."

"Conferences at the top level are always courteous. Name calling is left to the foreign ministers."

"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."

"As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the street."

"Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty."

"When I was in the military I always made it my first mission to burn the enemy's crops!"

"There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation."

"Maybe you are the “cool” generation … If coolness means a capacity to stay calm and use your head in the service of ends passionately believed in, then it has my admiration."

"You and I know that there is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly."

"While the spoken word can travel faster, you can’t take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader."

"The newspaper fits the reader’s program while the listener must fit the broadcaster’s program."

"Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure."

"If I take refuge in ambiguity, I assure you that it’s quite conscious."

"It is the natural desire of each nation to use the other as an instrument of its own purposes and policies. By dint of our mutual dependence, your influence is amplified by our power. Our power is made more responsible and more effective by your influence."

"Perhaps the most fundamental value of a liberal education is that it makes life more interesting. It allows you to think things which do not occur to the less learned ... it makes it less likely that you will be bored with life."

"I’m very curious to know what the hell they’re saying on the phone, but I’d be more worried if they weren’t talking."

"Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information."

"We all live in a televised goldfish bowl."

"Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession."

"The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all."

"It is satisfying for the descendant of a dissident refugee from Elizabeth I to present his credentials to Elizabeth II."

"None of these strictures, however, should inhibit any one of us, in his individual capacity, from declaring himself on the issues of the trial and its fairness … So in spite of my insistence on the limits of my official capacity, I personally want to say that I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States. In large part this atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions against the Panthers in many parts of the country. It is also one more inheritance from centuries of racial discrimination and oppression…. The first contribution to the fairness of the trial which anyone can make is to cool rather than heat up the atmosphere in which the trial will be held."

"You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was “the scourge of God.”"

"There was an influence on the young people from the genius of this eminent scholar which was almost comparable to that of Pericles in Athens."

""The whole earth," said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, — "the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men." All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would do no injustice to the other noble achievements of the war, which have reflected such honor on both arms of the service, and have entitled the armies and the navy of the United States, their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and the richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg."

"Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy."

"Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity."

"We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power."

"We are blessed with a faith, which calls into action the whole intellectual man; which prescribes a reasonable service; which challenges the investigation of its evidences; and which, in the doctrine of immortality, invests the mind of man with a portion of the dignity of Divine intelligence."

"The admission to Harvard College depends upon examinations; and if this boy passes the examinations, he will be admitted; and if the white students choose to withdraw, all the income of the college will be devoted to his education."

"I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

"No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country’s good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot."

"The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces"

"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant."

"When I am dead, no pageant train Shall waste their sorrows at my bier, Nor worthless pomp of homage vain Stain it with hypocritic tear."

"It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war."

"In this country … men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire."

"More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example."

"The people will come to their own at last,— God is not mocked forever."

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-American_War The Spanish-American War has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune that loves the brave. It is now to be concluded, I hope, with that fine good nature, which is, after all, the distinguishing trait of the American character."

"Dealing with a government [Tsarist Russia] with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult and delicate matter."

"He never funked and he never lied I reckon he never knowed how."

"He weren't no saint—but at jedgment I'd run my chance with Jim. 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shook hands with him. He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing— And went for it thar and then; And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard On a man that died for men."

"At my door the Pale Horse stands To carry me to unknown lands."

"I think that saving a little child And bringing him to his own, Is a derned sight better business Than loafing around the throne."

"There is a power in public opinion in this country -and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers- which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens."