The Wit and Wisdom of Henry Clay: Quotations
"If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean."
"I stand corrected; I was only imagining what you would have said if you had been there."
"An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters."
"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity."
-Speech in the Senate (January 29, 1850)"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America."
-Source: In the U.S. Senate"The best and wisest among us are, at last, but weak and fallible human beings. And no man ought to set up his own judgment as an unerring standard by which correctness of all others is to be tested and tried."
"It is wisest always to combat without regard to the weakness of the foe, as if Napoleon or Wellington were in the field."
-from a campaign letter to John M. Berrien, Clay Papers, Volume 10, p.85"I think I have discovered the true want of the nation. They desire that an administration be true to itself, for it will certainly be untrue to some peoples."
-from a letter to James Brown, Clay Papers, Volume 6"This Union is my country; the 30 states are my country; Kentucky is my country."
-Admission of California—Aug 1850 (pg 1491)"Strike out the Constitution, in any one essential feature of it—do this and you strike out the sun from our political firmament, and you leave - all those ponderous bodies, the States, the planets of our system, to wander on in illimitable space, without any thing to keep them within their wonted and proper spheres."
-U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875"The power of a nation is said to consist in the sword and the purse. Perhaps, at last, all power is resolvable into that of the purse, for with you may command almost everything else."
-Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay Vol. 1, pg. 220 (On the Bank Charter)"My voice, once strong and powerful, has had its vigor impaired by delicate health and advancing age."
-Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay Vol. 1, pg. 562 (On Retiring from Office)"Government is a trust, and the officers of government are trustees; and the trust and trustees are created for the benefit of the people."
-Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay Vol. 1. pg. 566 (On the Beginning of Jackson's Administration)"The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments."
-Speech in the Senate (March 14, 1834)"I call upon all the South. Sir, we have had hard words, bitter words, bitter thoughts, unpleasant feelings toward each other in the progress of this great measure. Let us forget them. Let us sacrifice these feelings. Let us go to the altar of our country and swear, as the oath was taken of old, that we will stand by her; that we will support her; that we will uphold her Constitution; that we will preserve her union; and that we will pass this great, comprehensive, and healing system of measures, which will hush all the jarring elements and bring peace and tranquillity to our homes."
-Speech in the Senate (February 6, 1850)"I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me upon earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle."
-Closing Prayer of Henry Clay, Speech before the U.S. Senate on the Compromise Resolutions, of February 6, 1850"A declaration of war is the highest and most awful exercise of sovereignty."
-Speech in Lexington; Nov. 13, 1847. (vol. 10)"A life of great length and experience has satisfied me, that all parties aim at the
common good of the country. I place country far above all parties."
-Speech in Wilmington, NC. April 9, 1844 (vol. 10)"Sir, I believe there is a Government bank lurking in this bill.. .Gentlemen may make their own bed as they please, but they will find thorns and thistles enough in it when they come to lie down."
-Jan 1840, congressional globe. Pg 123“War and the dissolution of the Union are identical and inseparable. There can be no dissolution of the Union, except by consent or by war.”
-Compromise Resolution- Mr. Clay, February 6, 1850“We have mutual faults; nothing in the form of the human beings can be perfect; let us, then be kind to each other, forbearing, conceding; let us live in happiness and peace.”
-(Clay on comparing the Union to a marriage)"Now, if any of these gentleman were sacrificed in the cause of their country, I would write upon their tombstone this epitaph: 'here lies a noble patriot, who loved his country better than himself.'"
-The Compromise Bill- Meser, Clay and Hale