Chauncey Depew Quotes

Chauncey Depew offers sly, witty barbs about politics and life, perfect for anyone who enjoys a dry laugh.

18 quotes

  1. I saw Mr. Lincoln a number of times during the canvass for his second election. The characteristic which struck me most was his superabundance of common sense. His power of managing men, of deciding and avoiding difficult questions, surpassed that of any man I ever met. A keen insight of human nature had been cultivated by the trials and struggles of his early life. He knew the people and how to reach them better than any man of his time. I heard him tell a great many stories, many of which would not do exactly for the drawing-room; but for the person he wished to reach, and the object he desired to accomplish with the individual, the story did more than any argument could have done.

  2. A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.

  3. I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.

  4. If you will refrain from telling any lies about the Republican Party, I'lll promise not to tell the truth about the Democrats.

  5. He is one of the foremost orators in the country, and as an after-dinner speaker is unrivaled. He charms a cultivated audience by his subtle humor, and a general audience by his flowing wit; is, in fact, so flexible that he can readily and easily adapt himself to circumstances.

  6. Allen Thorndike Rice in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (1886), p. 637

  7. Force was the factor in the government of the world when Christ was born, and force was the source and exercise of authority both by Church and State when Columbus sailed from Palos. The Wise Men traveled from the East toward the West under the guidance of the Star of Bethlehem. The spirit of the equality of all men before God and the law moved westward from Calvary with its revolutionary influence upon old institutions, to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus carried it westward across the seas.

  8. Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

  9. If we claim heritage in Bacon, Shakespeare and Milton, we also acknowledge that it was for liberties guaranteed Englishmen by sacred charters our fathers triumphantly fought. While wisely rejecting throne and caste and privilege and an Established Church in their new-born state, they adopted the substance of English liberty and the body of English law.

  10. When Franklin drew the lightning from the clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his discovery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the hope and promise of homes and citizenship.

  11. As for food, half of my friends have dug their graves with their teeth.

  12. It's pleasant to hear these nice words while I'm still alive. I'd rather have the taffy than the epitaphy.

  13. Neither realism nor romance furnishes a more striking and picturesque figure than that of Christopher Columbus. The mystery about his origin heightens the charm of his story.

  14. It is a pity that instead of the Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had not landed on the Pilgrim Fathers.

  15. But the closer we study their lives, and the better we know their deeds, the more profound is our admiration and the greater our reverence for the Pilgrim fathers. Between the drafting of their immortal charter of liberty in the cabin of the Mayflower and the fruition of their principles in the power and majesty of the republic of the United States of to-day is but a span in the records of the word, and yet it is the most important and beneficent chapter in history. To be able to claim descent from them, either by birth or adoption, is to glory in kinship with God's nobility.

  16. The enjoyment of life would be instantly gone if you removed the possibility of doing something.

  17. There are millions of stories in the world, and several hundred of them good ones.

  18. The government of the United States is and always has been a lawyer's government.