Quotes from George Bancroft

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

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

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.

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.

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

In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces.

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.

Avarice is the vice of declining years.