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" The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority. "

John C. Calhoun

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" The danger in our system is that the general government, which represents the interests of the whole, may encroach on the states, which represent the peculiar and local interests, or that the latter may encroach on the former. "

John C. Calhoun

" The country is filled with energetic and enterprising men, rendered desperate by being reduced from affluence to poverty through the vicissitudes of the times. They will give an impulse to smuggling unknown to the country heretofore. "

John C. Calhoun

" Remember, it is a deep principle of our nature not to regard the safety of those who do not regard their own. If you are indifferent to your own safety, you must not be surprised if those less interested should become more so. "

John C. Calhoun

" Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the way which has led nations to greatness. "

John C. Calhoun

" It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty. "

John C. Calhoun

" The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised. "

John C. Calhoun

" Without thinking or reflecting, we plunge into war, contract heavy debts, increase vastly the patronage of the Executive, and indulge in every species of extravagance, without thinking that we expose our liberty to hazard. It is a great and fatal mistake. "

John C. Calhoun

" Were there no contrariety of interests, nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve free institutions. The right of suffrage alone would be a sufficient guarantee. It is the conflict of opposing interests which renders it the most difficult work of man. "

John C. Calhoun

" The strong should always permit the weak and aggrieved to talk, to bluster, and scold without taking offence; and if we had so acted, and exercised proper skill in the management of our affairs, Mexico and ourselves would, by this time, have quietly and peaceably settled all difficulties and been good friends. "

John C. Calhoun

" Fanatics, as a class, have far more zeal than intellect and are fanatics only because they have. There can be no fanaticism but where there is more passion than reason; and hence, in the nature of things, movements originating in it run down in a short time by their folly and extravagance. "

John C. Calhoun

" True consistency, that of the prudent and the wise, is to act in conformity with circumstances and not to act always the same way under a change of circumstances. "

John C. Calhoun

" Our government is deeply disordered; its credit is impaired; its debt increasing; its expenditures extravagant and wasteful; its disbursements without efficient accountability; and its taxes (for duties are but taxes) enormous, unequal, and oppressive to the great producing classes of the country. "

John C. Calhoun

" Be assured that, as certain as Congress transcends its assigned limits and usurps powers never conferred, or stretches those conferred beyond the proper limits, so surely will the fruits of its usurpation pass into the hands of the Executive. In seeking to become master, it but makes a master in the person of the President. "

John C. Calhoun

" It is no less the duty of the minority than a majority to endeavour to defend the country. "

John C. Calhoun

" By nature, every individual has the right to govern himself; and governments, whether founded on majorities or minorities, must derive their right from the assent, expressed or implied, of the governed,, and be subject to such limitations as they may impose. "

John C. Calhoun

" Learn from your mistakes and build on your successes. "

John C. Calhoun

" Beware the wrath of a patient adversary. "

John C. Calhoun

" In looking back, I see nothing to regret and little to correct. "

John C. Calhoun

" There is but one nation on the globe from which we have anything serious to apprehend, but that is the most powerful that now exists or ever did exist. I refer to Great Britain. "

John C. Calhoun

" We make a great mistake in supposing all people are capable of self-government. "

John C. Calhoun

" I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slaveholder - a kind and a merciful one, I trust - and none the worse for being a slaveholder. "

John C. Calhoun

" There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires. "

John C. Calhoun

" England has not wholly escaped the curse which must ever befall a free government which holds extensive provinces in subjection; for, although she has not lost her liberty or fallen into anarchy, yet we behold the population of England crushed to the earth by the superincumbent weight of debt and taxation, which may one day terminate in revolution. "

John C. Calhoun

" The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster. "

John C. Calhoun