Quotes from George Bancroft

Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

By common consent, gray hairs are a crown of glory: the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

The public is wiser than the wisest critic.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person.

Beauty is but the sensible image of the infinite. Like truth and justice, it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law, it is a companion of the soul.

If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.

Style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.

Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.

By common consent grey hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force

Conscience is the mirror of our souls which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

Harmony is the characteristic of the intellectual system of the universe; and immutable laws of moral existence must pervade all time and all space, all ages and all worlds.

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory the only object of respect that can never excite envy.