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I have no commiseration for princes. My sympathies are reserved for the great mass of mankind ….

Henry Clay

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Henry Clay
Age: 75 †
Born: 1777
Born: April 12
Died: 1852
Died: June 29
Diplomat
Former United States Representative
Lawyer
Politician
Slaveholder
Hanover County
Virginia
Henry Clay
Sr.
Henry Clay Sr.
Reserved
Mass
Mankind
Great
Commiseration
Sympathies
Princes

More quotes by Henry Clay

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A man must be a born fool who voluntarily engages in controversy with Mr. Adams on a question of fact. I doubt whether he was ever mistaken in his life.
Henry Clay
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The imposition of taxes has its limits. There is a maximum which cannot be transcended. Suppose the citizen to be taxed by the general government to the utmost extent of his ability, or a thing as much as it can possibly bear, and the state imposes a tax at the same time, which authority is to take it?
Henry Clay
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I cannot believe that the killing of 2,000 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies a person for the various difficult and complicated duties of the Presidency.
Henry Clay
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The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim denounces it and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.
Henry Clay
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I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.
Henry Clay
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Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
Henry Clay
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The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.
Henry Clay
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Political parties serve to keep each other in check, one keenly watching the other.
Henry Clay
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An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.
Henry Clay
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Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, I will never compromise but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.
Henry Clay
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The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers.
Henry Clay
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Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.
Henry Clay
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Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
Henry Clay
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A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds they constitute one common patrimony, the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers, they arouse and animate our own people.
Henry Clay
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Precedents deliberately established by wise men are entitled to great weight. They are evidence of truth, but only evidence...But a solitary precedent...which has never been reexamined, cannot be conclusive.
Henry Clay
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There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished that of the other continues to this day.
Henry Clay
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The time will come when winter will ask what you were doing all summer.
Henry Clay
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All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.
Henry Clay
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By competition the total amount of supply is increased, and by increase of the supply a competition in the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer to buy at lower rates. Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.
Henry Clay
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I am not, sir, in favor of cherishing the passion of conquest. I am permitted ... to indulge the hope of seeing, ere long, the new United States, (if you will allow me the expression,) embracing not only the old.
Henry Clay