Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933,) fully John Calvin Coolidge, was an American Republican statesman who served as the 13th U.S. president 1923–29. His administration is remembered mainly for establishing minimal government interference in business and commerce, summarized by his expression, “the business of America is business.” Although he presided over a decade of unparalleled growth, his term has become emblematic of the self-satisfied conservatism that helped precipitate the Great Depression.
Born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Coolidge first practiced law in Northampton, Massachusetts. He entered state politics as a Republican, was mayor of Northampton (1910–11,) state senator (1912–15,) state lieutenant governor (1919–21,) and governor (1919–20.) He gained national celebrity through a tough stand against a Boston police strike in 1919.
Elected vice president with Warren G. Harding, he succeeded to the presidency after Harding’s death (1923) and easily won a full term in 1924. Pro-business policies marked Coolidge’s administration. He committed to reducing income taxes and the national debt and was noted for his guiding principle of non-interference in foreign affairs, which culminated in the signing of the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928. His policies encouraged the reckless stock market speculation of the late 1920s.
Coolidge announced his decision not to stand for re-election in 1928 with a terse announcement that has since become a catchphrase: “I do not choose to run.” He spent the later years of his life writing his Autobiography (1929) and contributing articles to newspapers and magazines.
Coolidge destroyed most of his private papers and remains enigmatic in essential ways. Although highly popular, he is known as a reserved and distant man.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Calvin Coolidge
Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Thrift
You can’t know too much, but you can say too much.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Knowledge
Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important and that his work well done is a part of an unending plan.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Faith
My own participation in the campaign was delayed by the death of my son Calvin, which occurred on the seventh of July. He was a boy of much promise, proficient in his studies, with a scholarly mind, who had just turned sixteen.
He had a remarkable insight into things.
The day I became President he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, if my father was President I would not work in a tobacco field, Calvin replied, If my father were your father, you would….
We do not know what might have happened to him under other circumstances, but if I had not been President, he would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis in the South Grounds.In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.
When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.
The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.
I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Presidency
Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Economy
The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.
—Calvin Coolidge
Parties do not maintain themselves. They are maintained by effort. The government is not self-existent. It is maintained by the effort of those who believe in it. The people of America believe in American institutions, the American form of government and the American method of transacting business.
—Calvin Coolidge
We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Happiness, Contentment, One Step at a Time, Action, Responsibility
The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, etc. the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go.
—Calvin Coolidge
Prosperity cannot be divorced from humanity.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Prosperity
The business of America is business and the chief ideal of the American people is idealism.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: America, Business
We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Prophecy, Vision
The man who builds a factory builds a temple; the man who works there worships there; and to each is due not scorn and blame but reverence and praise.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Work
When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Work
Civilization and profits go hand in hand.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Profit
I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can’t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Goodness, Progress
They criticize me for harping on the obvious – If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Criticism
Advertising is the life of trade.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Advertising
Look well to the hearthstone; therein all hope for America lies.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Home
Education will not (take the place of persistence); the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Determination
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Ideals, Idealism
Our doctrine of equality and liberty and humanity comes from our belief in the brotherhood of man, through the fatherhood of God.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Humanity
Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Presidency
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Christmas
To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
—Calvin Coolidge
It is necessary to have party organization if we are to have effective and efficient government. The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization, and the only difference between a disorganized country and one that has the advantage of a wise and sound government is fundamentally a question of organization.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Organization
The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Religion
If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Failure, Progress
Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.
—Calvin Coolidge
Topics: Government, Rightness, Right
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