I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.
The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as it exists, our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question.
We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd; we forget that in the resistance of the minority some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn't hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country.
I am not one of those who have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.
The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in actiona nationthat neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
There is such a thing as man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
I am all kinds of a democrat, so far as I can discover but the root of the whole business is this, that I believe in the patriotism and energy and initiative of the average man.