Grover Cleveland

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Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was the 22nd (1885-1889) and 24th (1893-1897) President of the United States. He was the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Sourced

• Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.
  • Letter accepting the nomination for governor of New York (October 1882)

• Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
  • First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1885)

• After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude, these laws are brought forth.
  • Message (March 1, 1886)

• When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.
  • Second Annual Message (December 1886)

• It is a condition which confronts us — not a theory.
  • Third Annual Message (December 6, 1887)

• The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.
  • Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1893)

• I have tried so hard to do the right.
  • Last words

Attributed

• A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

• A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.

• He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.

• Honor lies in honest toil.

• I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor.

• I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid.

• I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.

• It is better to be defeated standing for a high principle than to run by committing subterfuge.

• Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

• No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of a law.

• Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.

• Party honesty is party expediency.

• The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.

• The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.

• There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.

• Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.

External links

• Works by Grover Cleveland at Project Gutenberg

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