Calvin Coolidge

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (4 July 1872 – 5 January 1933) was the twenty-ninth (1921–1923) Vice President and the thirtieth (1923–1929) President of the United States.

Sourced

• I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.
  • 1924 Inaugural Addresshttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge's_Inaugural_Address

• There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.
  • Telegram to AFL president Samuel Gompers, 14 September 1919; concerning the 1919 Boston Police strike

• There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.
  • "Whose Country Is This?," Good Housekeeping Magazine, February 1921

• The chief business of the American people is business.
  • Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 17 January 1925

• If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
  • "Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence", 5 July 1926

• We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.
  • "Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence", 5 July 1926

• About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter.
  • Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.

• No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more "modern," but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.
  • Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451.

• I do not choose to run for President in 1928.
  • Statement to reporters, 2 August 1927; cited in Bartlett's Famous Quotations, 16th ed. (1992).

• Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
  • Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service, 1933; cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999)

Misattributed

• Coolidge: Sins.
  Mrs. Coolidge: Well, what did he say about it?
  Coolidge: He was against it.
  • when asked by his wife what a preacher's sermon had been about
  • John H. McKee, Coolidge: Wit and Wisdom, 1933
  • Author Nigel Rees claims this is apocryphal:
    • The taciturn President became famous for monosyllabic replies. A story from the twenties has Mrs. Coolidge asking him the subject of a sermon he had heard. "Sin," he answered. When prompted to elaborate on the clergyman's theme, Coolidge is said to have replied: "He was against it." Coolidge remarked that this story would have been funnier if it had been true.
      • Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century, page 67

About Calvin Coolidge

• Coolidge's simplicity should better be thought of as a chronic inability to harness the potential of his office, the result of which was the thinnest record of accomplishment of any 20th-century President.
  • Jacob Appel in a letter to the editors, The American Spectator, Jan 6 2009.

• Isn't it past your bedtime, Calvin?
  • Groucho Marx, breaking character to address President Coolidge after he learned that the President was in the audience of their Broadway show.

• [President Coolidge's] active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone… And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy…
  • Walter Lippmann, 1926

• How could they tell?
  • Dorothy Parker, upon being informed of Coolidge's death

• As president, Calvin Coolidge didn't do much of anything, but at the time, that's what we needed to have done.
  • Will Rogers