John C. Calhoun

Quotes

• “What we want, above all things on earth in our public men, is independence. It is one great defect in the character of t...”
• “When we contend, let us contend for all our rights - the doubtful and the certain, the unimportant and essential. It is ...”
• “I am aware how difficult is the task to preserve free institutions over so wide a space and so immense a population, but...”
• “Were there no contrariety of interests, nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve free institution...”
• “I hold that there is a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico so much so that her ind...”
• “It is a remarkable fact in the political history of man that there is scarcely an instance of a free constitutional gove...”
• “I know that there is a great diversity of opinion as to who, in fact, pays the duties on imports. I do not intend to dis...”
• “The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding Stat...”
• “It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religi...”
• “The country is filled with energetic and enterprising men, rendered desperate by being reduced from affluence to poverty...”
• “True consistency that of the prudent and the wise is to act in conformity with circumstances and not to act always th...”
• “I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slaveholder - a kind and a merciful one, I trust - and none...”
• “War may be made by one party, but it requires two to make peace.”
• “It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”