The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge quotes

About it were a considerable number of good apple trees. I think the price paid was $375. Almost at once the principal barn was sold for $100, to be moved away.

My father was a good trader.

Some repairs were made on the inside, and black walnut furniture was brought from Boston to furnish the parlor and sitting room. It was a plain square-sided house with a long ell, to which the horse barn was soon added.

He always pitched the hay on to the ox cart and I raked after. If I was getting behind he slowed up a little.

He was a bighearted man. I wish I could see that blacksmith again.

The iron work for farm wagons and sleds was fashioned and put on in the shop, oxen and horses brought there for shoeing, and metal parts of farm implements often repaired.

If there was any physical requirement of country life which he could not perform, I do not know what it was. From watching him and assisting him, I gained an intimate knowledge of all this kind of work.

It seems impossible that any man could adequately describe his mother. I cannot describe mine.

On the side of her father, Hiram Dunlap Moor, she was Scotch with a mixture of Welsh and English. Her mother, Abigail (Franklin) Moor, was chiefly of the old New England stock. She bore the name of two Empresses, Victoria Josephine.

In an hour she was gone. It was her thirty-ninth birthday. I was twelve years old. We laid her away in the blustering snows of March.

The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life was never to seem the same again.

Five years and forty-one years later almost to a day my sister and my father followed her. It always seemed to me that the boy I lost was her image. They all rest together on the sheltered hillside among five generations of the Coolidge family.

When news pictures began to be taken of me there, I found that among the public this was generally supposed to be a makeup costume, which it was not, so I have since been obliged to forego the comfort of wearing it.

In public life it is sometimes necessary in order to appear really natural to be actually artificial.

Perhaps some glimpse of these pictures may have caused an English writer to refer to me as a Vermont backwoodsman. I wonder if he describes his King as a Scotchman when he sees him in kilts.

Perhaps some glimpse of these pictures may have caused an English writer to refer to me as a Vermont backwoodsman.

I wonder if he describes his King as a Scotchman when he sees him in kilts.

To those of his country who remember that Burgoyne sent home a dispatch saying that the Green Mountains were the abode of the most warlike race on the continent, who hung like a thunder cloud on his left—which was fully borne out by what they …

As we rounded the brow of the hill the first rays of the morning sun streamed over our backs and lighted up the glistening snow ahead.

I was perfectly certain that I was traveling out of the darkness into the light.

We have much speculation over whether the city or the country is the better place to bring up boys. I am prejudiced in behalf of the country, but I should have to admit that much depends on the parents and the surrounding neighborhood.

While a wider breadth of training and knowledge could have been presented to me, there was a daily contact with many new ideas, and the mind was given sufficient opportunity thoroughly to digest all that came to it.

Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth.

It is neither artificial nor superficial, but is kept close to the realities.

But a horse is much company, and riding over the fields and along the country roads by himself, where nothing interrupts his seeing and thinking, is a good occupation for a boy.

The silences of Nature have a discipline all their own.

Of course our school life was not free from pranks. The property of the townspeople was moved to strange places in the night. One morning as the janitor was starting the furnace he heard a loud bray from one of the classrooms.

The sweetness of her nature was a benediction to all who came in contact with her.

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

The Academy had no athletics in those days, as the boys from the farms did not feel the need of such activity. A few games of baseball were played, but no football or track athletics were possible.

Much of its social life centered around the fraternities, and although they did not leave me without an invitation to join them it was not until senior year that an opportunity came to belong to one that I wished to accept.

It has been my observation in life that, if one will only exercise the patience to wait, his wants are likely to be filled.

My class was rather small, not numbering more than eighty-five in a student body of about four hundred. President Julius H. Seelye, who had led the college for about twenty years with great success as an educator and inspirer of young men, had just retired.

The good it did I believe was infinite. Not the least of it was the discipline that resulted from having constantly to give some thought to things that young men would often prefer not to consider.

If we did not have the privilege of doing what we wanted to do, we had the much greater benefit of doing what we ought to do.

It broke down our selfishness, it conquered our resistance, it supplanted impulse, and finally it enthroned reason.

There was a canoe club which I joined, on the Connecticut, about a mile over the meadow from the town where I often went on Sunday afternoons.

I was full of the joy of doing something in the world.

Another reason why I discarded all outside enterprises and kept strictly to my work and my books was because I was keeping my monthly expenditures within thirty dollars which was furnished me by my father.

He was defeated by about eighty votes. We made the mistake of talking too much about the deficiencies of our opponents and not enough about the merits of our own candidates.

I have never again fallen into that error.

Feeling one year was all I could give to the chairmanship I did not accept a reelection but still remained on the committee.

I always made my living practicing law up to the time I became Governor, without being dependent on any official salary. This left me free to make my own decisions in accordance with what I thought was the public good.

We lived where we did that I might better serve the people.

My main thought in those days was to improve myself in my profession. I was still studying law and literature. Because I thought the experience would contribute to this end I became a candidate for the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

He meant that we should try to guide ourselves by general principles and not get lost in particulars. That may sound like mysticism, but it is only the mysticism that envelopes every great truth.

One of the greatest mysteries in the world is the success that lies in conscientious work.

My first campaign for Mayor was very intense. My opponent was a popular merchant, a personal friend of mine who years later was to be Mayor, so that at the outset he was the favorite.

Soon, Samuel Gompers began to telegraph me asking the removal of Mr. Curtis and the reinstatement of the union policemen. This required me to make a reply in which I stated among other things that “

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, any time, anywhere.

” This phrase caught the attention of the nation. It was beginning to be clear that if voluntary associations were to be permitted to substitute their will for the authority of public officials the end of our government was at hand.

The requirements of the situation as it developed seem clear and plain now, and easy to decide, but as they arose they were very complicated and involved in many immaterial issues.

The right thing to do never requires any subterfuges, it is always simple and direct.

That is the reason that intrigue usually falls of its own weight.

Any other course for me would have been cut short by the barnyard philosophy of my father, who would have contemptuously referred to such action as the senseless imitation of a fowl which was attempting to light higher than it could roost.

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.

In our country a small income is usually less embarrassing than the possession of a large one.

… is often required to close debate, and because of the great power each Senator is therefore permitted to exercise—which is often a veto power, making one Senator a majority of the ninety-six Senators—great care should be exercised by the states in their choice of Senators.

Nothing is more dangerous to good government than great power in improper hands.

If the Senate has any weakness it is because the people have sent to that body men lacking the necessary ability and character to perform the proper functions. But this is not the fault of the Senate.

In these two years I witnessed the gigantic task of demobilizing a war government and restoring it to a peacetime basis. I also came in contact with many of the important people of the United States and foreign countries.

All talent eventually arrives at Washington.

Most of the world figures were there at the Conference on Limitation of Armaments. Other meetings brought people only a little less distinguished. While I had little official connection with these events the delegates called on me and I often met them on social occasions.

It is a very old saying that you never can tell what you can do until you try. The more I see of life the more I am convinced of the wisdom of that observation.

Surprisingly few men are lacking in capacity, but they fail because they are lacking in application.

Either they never learn how to work, or, having learned, they are too indolent to apply themselves with the seriousness and the attention that is necessary to solve important problems.

This was not any feeling of exclusiveness. While I felt qualified to serve, I was also well aware that there were many others who were better qualified. It would be my province to get the benefit of their opinions and advice.

It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.

When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.

But if I had not voluntarily gone to church and partaken of communion, this blessing would not have come to me.

Fate bestows its rewards on those who put themselves in the proper attitude to receive them.

During my service in Washington I had seen a large amount of government business.

I have often said that there was no cause for feeling disturbed at being misrepresented in the press. It would be only when they began to say things detrimental to me which were true that I should feel alarm.

Perhaps one of the reasons I have been a target for so little abuse is because I have tried to refrain from abusing other people.

The words of the President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.

While everyone knows that evil exists, there is yet sufficient good in the people to supply material for most of the comment that needs to be made.

The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.

The country is better off tranquilly considering its blessings and merits, and earnestly striving to secure more of them, than it would be in nursing hostile bitterness about its deficiencies and faults.

… now think of any that did not react with overwhelming force upon the perpetrators, sometimes destroying them and sometimes giving their proposed victim an opportunity to demonstrate his courage, strength and soundness, which increased his standing with the people and raised him to higher office.

There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.

Many people at once began to speak about nominating me to lead my party in the next campaign. I did not take any position in relation to their efforts.

The day I became President he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, “If my father was President I would not work in a tobacco field,”

Calvin replied, “If my father were your father, you would.”

After he was gone someone sent us a letter he had written about the same time to a young man who had congratulated him on being the first boy in the land.

We do not know what might have happened to him under other circumstances, but if I had not been President he would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis in the South Grounds.

In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.

When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.

In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.

When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.

The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.

The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.

I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.

Sustained by the great outpouring of sympathy from all over the nation, my wife and I bowed to the Supreme Will and with such courage as we had went on in the discharge of our duties.

For my personal contact with him during his last months I had to resort to the poor substitute of the telephone. When I reached home he was gone.

It costs a great deal to be President.

His methods of work, his associates, his place of abode, can all be described. But the relationship created by all these and more, which constitutes the magnitude of the office, does not yield to definition.

Like the glory of a morning sunrise, it can only be experienced⁠—it cannot be told.

In the discharge of the duties of the office there is one rule of action more important than all others. It consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you. Like many other good rules, it is proven by its exceptions.

In the discharge of the duties of the office there is one rule of action more important than all others.

It consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you.

Like many other good rules, it is proven by its exceptions.

Quarters must also be provided for a large retinue of newspaper reporters and cameramen who follow him upon all occasions.

Every switch that he goes over is spiked down. Every freight train that he passes is stopped and every passenger train slowed down to ten miles per hour.

While all of this proceeds smoothly, it requires careful attention to a great variety of details.

It has never been my practice to speak from rear platforms. The confusion is so great that few people could hear and it does not seem to me very dignified.

When the President speaks it ought to be an event.

The excuse for such appearances which formerly existed has been eliminated by the coming of the radio. It is so often that the President is on the air that almost anyone who wishes has ample opportunity to hear his voice.

About the only time that I have spoken was at Bennington in September of 1928, where I expressed my affection and respect for the people of the state of Vermont, as I was passing through that town on my way back to Washington.

I found that the love I had for the hills where I was born touched a responsive chord in the heart of the whole nation.

One of the most appalling trials which confront a President is the perpetual clamor for public utterances. Invitations are constant and pressing. They come by wire, by mail, and by delegations.

Before it is finished it is thoroughly examined by one or two of my staff, and oftentimes by a member of the Cabinet.

It is not difficult for me to deliver an address. The difficulty lies in its preparation.

This is an important part of the work of a President which he cannot escape. It is inherent in the office.

He loved to bark from the second-story windows and around the South Grounds. Nights he remained in my room and afternoons went with me to the office. His especial delight was to ride with me in the boats when I went fishing.

So although I know he would bark for joy as the grim boatman ferried him across the dark waters of the Styx, yet his going left me lonely on the hither shore.

As I left office I realized that the more I had seen of the workings of the Federal government the more respect I came to have for it. It is carried on by hundreds of thousands of people. Some prove incompetent.

By quietly making this known to the Senate, and enlisting support for that position among their constituents, it was possible to secure such modification of the measure that it could be adopted without greatly endangering the revenue.

But a President cannot, with success, constantly appeal to the country. After a time he will get no response.

The people have their own affairs to look after and cannot give much attention to what the Congress is doing. If he takes a position, and stands by it, ultimately it will be adopted.

In choosing persons for service over the whole or any considerable portion of a single state, it is customary to rely almost entirely on the party Senators from that state for recommendations.

It is not possible to find men who are perfect.

Selection always has to be limited to human beings, whatever choice is made. It is therefore always possible to point out defects.

… that persons accepting a government appointment would betray their trust in favor of former associates can be understood only on the supposition that those who make it feel that their own tenure of public office is for the purpose of benefiting themselves and their friends.

Everyone knows that where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.

When a man has invested his personal interest and reputation in the conduct of a public office, if he goes wrong it will not be because of former relations, but because he is a bad man.

They gladly contribute their money to place the United States in the lead. In general, they represent the public opinion of the land.

But they are unorganized, formless, and inarticulate.

Against a compact and well drilled minority they do not appear to be very effective. They are nevertheless the great power in our government. I have constantly appealed to them and have seldom failed in enlisting their support.

But they are unorganized, formless, and inarticulate. Against a compact and well drilled minority they do not appear to be very effective. They are nevertheless the great power in our government. I have constantly appealed to them and have seldom failed in enlisting their support.

They are the court of last resort and their decisions are final.

They are, however, the indirect rather than the direct power. The immediate authority with which the President has to deal is vested in the political mind. In order to get things done he has to work through that agency.

In order to get things done he has to work through that agency. Some of our Presidents have appeared to lack comprehension of the political mind. Although I have been associated with it for many years, I always found difficulty in understanding it.

It is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeur at another time, of the most selfish preferment combined with the most sacrificing patriotism.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. With them nothing is natural, everything is artificial.

It is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeur at another time, of the most selfish preferment combined with the most sacrificing patriotism.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.

With them nothing is natural, everything is artificial. A few rare souls escape these influences and maintain a vision and a judgment that are unimpaired. They are a great comfort to every President and a great service to their country.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.

With them nothing is natural, everything is artificial.

A few rare souls escape these influences and maintain a vision and a judgment that are unimpaired. They are a great comfort to every President and a great service to their country.

While an independent attitude on the part of the citizen is not without a certain public advantage, yet it is necessary under our form of government to have political parties.

Unless someone is a partisan, no one can be an independent.

The Congress is organized entirely in accordance with party policy. The parties appeal to the voters in behalf of their platforms. The people make their choice on those issues.

Unless the party leaders exercising it can depend on loyalty and organization support, the party in which it is reposed will become entirely ineffective. A party which is ineffective will soon be discarded.

If a party is to endure as a serviceable instrument of government for the country, it must possess and display a healthy spirit of party loyalty.

Such a manifestation in the Congress would do more than anything else to rehabilitate it in the esteem and confidence of the country.