Calvin Coolidge Quotes

“Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“I have never been hurt by what I have not said.”

— Calvin Coolidge

The college of that day had a very laudable desire to get students, and having admitted them, it was equally alert in striving to keep them and help them get an education, with the result that very few left of their own volition and almost none were dropped for failure in their work. There was no marked exodus at the first examination period, which was due not only to the attitude of the college but to the attitude of the students, who did not go there because they wished to experiment for a few months with college life and be able to say thereafter they had been in college, but went because they felt they had need of an education, and expected to work hard for that purpose until the course was finished. There were few triflers.

— Calvin Coolidge

“Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of our nation.”

— Calvin Coolidge

I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.

— Calvin Coolidge

“Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“No man ever listened himself out of a job.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Mass demand has been created almost entirely through the development of advertising.”

— Calvin Coolidge

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.

— Calvin Coolidge

In life there is nothing more common than talent and intelligence. What is missing is passion, persistence, commitment, and dedication.

— Calvin Coolidge

“Your ability to face setbacks and disappointments without giving up will be the measure of your ability to succeed.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“A lost article invariably shows up after you replace it.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“If a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”

— Calvin Coolidge

I did not see the sense in chasing a little white ball around a field.

— Calvin Coolidge

“What men owe to the love and help of good women can never be told.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“If American democracy is to remain the greatest hope of humanity, it must continue abundantly in the faith of the Bible”

— Calvin Coolidge

“The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“The final solution for unemployment is work.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“I do not want to see any of the people cringing supplicants for the favor of the Government, when they should all be independent masters of their own destiny.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“I want taxes to be less, that the people may have more.”

— Calvin Coolidge

America has but one main problem
the character of the men and women it shall produce.

— Calvin Coolidge

Because of what America is and what America has done, a firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.

— Calvin Coolidge

“The world is full of educated derelicts.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a president, and I think I'll go along with them.”

— Calvin Coolidge

Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.

— Calvin Coolidge

“Works which endure come from the soul of the people. The mighty in their pride walk alone to destruction. The humble walk hand in hand with providence to immortality. Their works survive.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Look well to the hearthstone; therein all hope for America lies.”

— Calvin Coolidge

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of the law for the virtues of men

— Calvin Coolidge

“There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear.”

— Calvin Coolidge

There's more, much more, to Christmas Than candlelight and cheer; It's the spirit of sweet friendship That brightens all year. It's thoughtfulness and kindness, It's hope reborn again, For peace, for understanding, And for goodwill to men!

— Calvin Coolidge

“No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquillity and contentment, harmonious relations between management and wage earner, freedom from industrial strife, and the highest record of years of prosperity.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Under our institutions the only way to perfect the Government is to perfect the individual citizen. It is necessary to reach the mind and soul of the individual. I know of no way that this can be done save through the influence of religion and education. By religion I do not mean fanaticism or bigotry; by education I do not mean the cant of the schools, but a broad and tolerant faith, loving thy neighbor as thyself, and a training and experience that enables the human mind to see into the heart of things.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“A government which requires of the people the contribution of the bulk of their substance and rewards cannot be classed as a free government ...”

— Calvin Coolidge

“The Jews themselves, of whom a considerable number were already scattered throughout the colonies, were true to the teachings of their prophets. The Jewish faith is predominantly the faith of liberty.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“It is very difficult to reconcile the American ideal of a sovereign people capable of owning and managing their own government with an inability to own and manage their own business.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.”

— Calvin Coolidge

I guess I am not naturally energetic. I like to sit around and talk.

— Calvin Coolidge

“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

“Despotism has forever had a powerful hold upon the world. Autocratic government, not self-government, has been the prevailing state of mankind. The record of past history is the record, not of the success of republics, but of their failure.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“Good government cannot be found on the bargain-counter. We have seen samples of bargain-counter government in the past when low tax rates were secured by increasing the bonded debt for current expenses or refusing to keep our institutions up to the standard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and accommodations. I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession ofa police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.”

— Calvin Coolidge

I think the Senate ought to realize that I have to have about me those in whom I have confidence; and unless they find a real blemish on a man, I do not think they ought to make partisan politics out of appointments to the Cabinet.

— Calvin Coolidge

“What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost.”

— Calvin Coolidge