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My place in history will depend on what I can do for the people and not on what the people can do for me.

William Jennings Bryan

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William Jennings Bryan
Age: 65 †
Born: 1860
Born: March 18
Died: 1925
Died: July 26
Diplomat
Editor
Former United States Secretary Of State
Lawyer
Politician
Publisher
Salem
Illinois
William J. Bryan
W. J. Bryan
William Bryan
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Bryan
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More quotes by William Jennings Bryan

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If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the Court. That will give you criticisms.
William Jennings Bryan
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The poor man who takes property by force is called a thief, but the creditor who can by legislation make a debtor pay a dollar twice as large as he borrowed is lauded as the friend of a sound currency. The man who wants the people to destroy the Government is an anarchist, but the man who wants the Government to destroy the people is a patriot.
William Jennings Bryan
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Belief in God is almost universal and the effect of this belief is so vast that one is appalled at the thought of what social conditions would be if reverence for God were erased from every heart.
William Jennings Bryan
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A belief in God is fundamental upon it rest the influences that control life.
William Jennings Bryan
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If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.
William Jennings Bryan
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If we desire rules to govern our spiritual development we turn back to the Sermon on the Mount.
William Jennings Bryan
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We spend months inside them, then the rest of our lives getting babied by them.
William Jennings Bryan
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All the ills from which America suffers can be traced back to the teaching of evolution. It would be better to destroy every other book ever written, and save just the first three verses of Genesis.
William Jennings Bryan
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New York is the city of privilege. Here is the seat of the Invisible Power represented by the allied forces of finance and industry. This Invisible Government is reactionary, sinister, unscrupulous, mercenary, and sordid. It is wanting in national ideals and devoid of conscience... This kind of government must be scourged and destroyed.
William Jennings Bryan
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Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.
William Jennings Bryan
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A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.
William Jennings Bryan
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The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interfere with the inalienable rights of the individual, among which are the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to worship God according to the dictates of ones conscience.
William Jennings Bryan
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Christ has made of death a narrow starlit strip between the companionships of yesterday and the reunions of tomorrow.
William Jennings Bryan
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If matter mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay?
William Jennings Bryan
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Most of the temptations that come to us to sell the soul come in connection with the getting of money.
William Jennings Bryan
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Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.
William Jennings Bryan
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That is the one thing in my public career that I regret--my work to secure the enactment of the Federal Reserve Law.
William Jennings Bryan
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No greater victory can be won by citizens or soldiers than to transform temporary foes into permanent friends.
William Jennings Bryan
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Our government conceived in freedom and purchased with blood can be preserved only by constant vigilance.
William Jennings Bryan
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None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. Only the active have the true relish of life.
William Jennings Bryan