Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was an American Federalist- and later Whig-party politician, lawyer, and orator who served as his country’s secretary of state.
Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, Webster graduated from Dartmouth in 1801, entered the bar in 1805, and practiced law in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A renowned orator, he represented New Hampshire 1813–17 and then Massachusetts 1823–27 in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate 1827–41 and 1845–50.
Webster supported protective tariffs, was a strong pro-Union advocate, and supported the Compromise of 1850 to preserve the Union. A leader of the Whig Party, Webster unsuccessfully ran for president in 1836.
Webster later served as President W. H. Harrison’s secretary of state 1841–43 and negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which settled boundary disputes with Canada and improved relations with Great Britain. He also developed America’s policy toward Asia by formulating a statement on Hawaii in 1842 and inaugurating the first diplomatic mission to China in 1843.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Daniel Webster
A superior and commanding intellect, a truly great man-when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift-is not a temporary flame, burning for a while, and then expiring, giving place to eternal darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind; so that, when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows; but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Intelligence
Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Capitalism
There is no evil we cannot face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Duty
It is, Sir, as I have said, a small College, And yet, there are those who love it.
—Daniel Webster
The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: God, Responsibility
We are tod much inclined to under-rate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opmion, and the influence of the principles to which great men—the lights of the world and of the present age—have given their sanction.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Opinion
If any thing I have ever said or written deserves the feeblest encomiums of my fellow countrymen, I have no hesitation in declaring that for their partiality I am indebted, solely indebted, to the daily and attentive perusal of the Sacred Scriptures, the source of all true poetry and eloquence, as well as of all good and all comfort.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Eloquence
God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it. Let our object be our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: America
No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Preparation, Speech
Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.
—Daniel Webster
The world is governed more by appearances than by realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Intelligence, Appearance, Reality
Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Cities
He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United States, as it burst forth from the conceptions of Alexander Hamilton.
—Daniel Webster
It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in its counsels, that we owe what we are, and what we hope to be.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Government
Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country, every wave rolls it and gives it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce of ideas, there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make up the minds and opinions of the age.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Ideas
I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Bible
A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Greatness
An individual is more apt to change, perhaps, than all the world around him.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Change
The longer I live the more highly do I estimate the Christian Sabbath, and the more grateful do I feel to those who impress its importance on the community.
—Daniel Webster
Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describes in so terse but terrific a manner, as “living without hope and without God in the world.” Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Religion, Conscience
Though we live in a reading age and in a reading community, yet the preaching of the Gospel is the form in which human agency has been and still is most efficaciously employed for the spiritual improvement of men.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Preaching
The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity.
—Daniel Webster
We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.
—Daniel Webster
Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Liberty
All that is best in the civilization of today, is the fruit of Christ’s appearance among men.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Civilization
While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full and high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a strip erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!
—Daniel Webster
The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Eloquence
When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.
—Daniel Webster
Whenever a jury, through whimsical or ill-founded scruples, suffer the guilty to escape, they become responsible for the augmented danger of the innocent.
—Daniel Webster
The morning itself, few inhabitants of cities know anything about. Among all our good people, not one in a thousand sees the sun rise once in a year. They know nothing of the morning. Their idea of it is that it is that part of the day which comes along after a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. With them, morning is not a new issuing of light, a new bursting forth of the sun, a new waking-up of all that has life from a sort of temporary death, to behold again the works of God, the heavens and the earth; it is only a part of the domestic day, belonging to reading newspapers, answering notes, sending the children to school, and giving orders for dinner. The first streak of light, the earliest purpling of the east, which the lark springs up to greet, and the deeper and deeper coloring into orange and red, till at length the “glorious sun is seen, regent of the day”—this they never enjoy, for they never see it. I never thought that Adam had much the advantage of us from having seen the world while it was new. The manifestations of the power of God, like his mercies, are “new every morning” and fresh every moment. We see as fine risings of the sun as ever Adam saw; and its risings are as much a miracle now as they were in his day—and, I think, a good deal more, because it is now a part of the miracle, that for thousands and thousands of years he has come to his appointed time, without the variation of a millionth part of a second. I know the morning—I am acquainted with it, and I love it. I love it fresh and sweet as it is—a daily new creation, breaking forth and calling all that have life and breath and being to a new adoration, new enjoyments, and new gratitude.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Morning
Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is triumphing, over prejudice and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Knowledge
Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man’s life.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Murder
The past is at least secure.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Past, The Past
Labor is the great producer of wealth; it moves all other causes.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Labor
Accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a lawyer than great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talent.—His business is to refine, define, split hairs, look into authorities, and compare cases.—A man can never gallop over the fields of law on Pegasus, nor fly across them on the wing of oratory.—If he would stand on terra firma, he must descend.—If he would be a great lawyer, he must first consent to become a great drudge.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Lawyers
Gentlemen, the character of Washington is among the most cherished contemplations of my life. It is a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining without twinkling or obscuration, with clear, steady, beneficent light.
—Daniel Webster
No government is respectable which is not just.—Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Government
Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will undertake its safety; and nothing can save it if they leave that safety in any hands but their own.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Government
From my earliest youth I have regarded slavery as a great moral and political evil.—I think it unjust, repugnant to the natural, equality of mankind, founded only in superior power; a standing and permanent conquest by the stronger over the weaker.—All pretence of defending it on the ground of different races, I have ever condemned, and have even said that if the black race is weaker, that is a reason against and not for its subjection and oppression.—In a religious point of view, I have ever regarded and spoken of it, not as subject to any express denunciation, either in the Old Testament or the New, but as opposed to the whole spirit of the gospel, and to the teachings of Jesus Christ.—The religion of Christ is a religion of kindness, justice, and brotherly love:—but slavery is not kindly affectionate; it does not seek another’s and not its own; it does not let the oppressed go free; it is but a continual act of oppression.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: Slavery
America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind—the laboring or lower class—to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and the great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.
—Daniel Webster
Topics: America
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