William Jennings Bryan Quotes
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The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interfere with the inalienable rights of the individual, among which are the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to worship God according to the dictates of ones conscience.
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Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
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One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.
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If God himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ.
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We can exterminate Ku Kluxism better by recognizing their honesty and teaching them that they are wrong.
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This nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.
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There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The DEMOCRATIC idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them
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Principles are eternal.
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All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.
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Wars are sometimes waged to extend trade-the blood of many being shed to enrich a few.
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Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
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A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.
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You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
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The essence of patriotism lies in a willingness to sacrifice for one's country, just as true greatness finds expression, not in blessings enjoyed, but in good bestowed.
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Belief in God is almost universal and the effect of this belief is so vast that one is appalled at the thought of what social conditions would be if reverence for God were erased from every heart.
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That is the one thing in my public career that I regret--my work to secure the enactment of the Federal Reserve Law.
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When we advocate a thing which we believe will be successful we are not compelled to raise a doubt as to our own sincerity by trying to show what we will do if we are wrong.
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Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.
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None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. Only the active have the true relish of life.
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Greed is at the bottom of most of the wrong-doing with which government has to deal.
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Only those who believe attempt the seemingly impossible.
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We have our thoughts, our hopes, our fears, and yet we know that in a moment a change may come over any one of us that will convert a living, breathing human being into a mass of lifeless clay.
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Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
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God may be a matter of indifference to the evolutionists, and a life beyond may have no charm for them, but the mass of mankind will continue to worship their creator and continue to find comfort in the promise of their Savior that he has gone to prepare a place for them.
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Facts mean nothing unless they are rightly understood, rightly related and rightly interpreted.
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You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave - now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks - tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.
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The first objection to Darwinism is that it is only a guess and was never anything more. It is called a "hypothesis," but the word "hypothesis," though euphonious, dignified and high-sounding, is merely a scientific synonym for the old-fashioned word "guess." If Darwin had advanced his views as a guess they would not have survived for a year, but they have floated for half a century, buoyed up by the inflated word "hypothesis." When it is understood that "hypothesis" means "guess," people will inspect it more carefully before accepting it.
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Success is brought by continued labor and continued watchfulness. We must struggle on, not for one moment hesitate, nor take one backward step.
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Eloquent speech is not from lip to ear, but rather from heart to heart.
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We spend months inside them, then the rest of our lives getting babied by them.
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William Jennings Bryan
- Born: March 19, 1860
- Died: July 26, 1925
- Occupation: Former United States Secretary of State