Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States and was recognized as an inspirational leader of the Presbyterian Church. He was a renowned lawyer and politician before he became President. Harrison’s life was spent serving the nation and he proved it on several occasions. He served as a colonel in the American Civil War, worked as a local Indiana attorney, and remained a US senator for six years.
To help you understand why Harrison is so admirable, we have gathered the best Benjamin Harrison quotes from his public appearances, speeches, and other works.
Most Inspiring Benjamin Harrison Quotes
1.”I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected, I had a hard day ahead of me. So, I thought a night’s rest was best in any event.” — Benjamin Harrison
2.“I have often thought that the life of the President is like that of the policeman in the opera, not a happy one.” — Benjamin Harrison
3.“I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.” ― Benjamin Harrison
4.“The virtues of courage and patriotism have given recent proof of their continued presence and increasing power in the hearts and over the lives of our people.” — Benjamin Harrison
5.“Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure.” — Benjamin Harrison
6.”When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact, to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law? When is that equality of influence which our form of government was intended to secure to the electors to be restored? This generation should courageously face these grave questions, and not leave them as a heritage of woe to the next.” — Benjamin Harrison
7.“I do the same thing every day. I eat three meals, sleep six hours and read dusty old books the rest of the time. My life is about as devoid of anything funny as the great desert is of grass.” — Benjamin Harrison
8.“The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth as well as in the sky; men were made free, and material things became our better servants.” — Benjamin Harrison
9.”God forbid that the day should ever come when, in the American mind, the thought of man as a ‘consumer’ shall submerge the old American thought of man as a creature of God, endowed with ‘unalienable rights.'” — Benjamin Harrison
10.”I want to avoid everything that is personal, and I want it understood that I am grandson of nobody.” — Benjamin Harrison
11.“Great lives never go out; they go on.” — Benjamin Harrison
12.“The bud of victory is always in the truth.” — Benjamin Harrison
13.“Have you not learned that not stocks or bonds or stately houses or products of the mill or field are our country? It is a spiritual thought that is in our minds.” — Benjamin Harrison
14.“We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.” — Benjamin Harrison
15.“The evil works from a bad center both ways. It demoralizes those who practice it and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector.” — Benjamin Harrison
16.“The community that by concert, open or secret, among its citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain rights under the law has severed the only safe bond of social order and prosperity.” — Benjamin Harrison
17.“Prayer steadies one when he is walking in slippery places – even if things asked for are not given.” — Benjamin Harrison
18.“In the old Republican days, the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others.” — Benjamin Harrison
19.“The disfranchisement of a single legal elector by fraud or intimidation is a crime too grave to be regarded lightly.” — Benjamin Harrison
20.“I’d rather have a bullet inside of me than to be living in constant dread of one.” — Benjamin Harrison
21.“The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code. Happily, for both races, they are now free.” — Benjamin Harrison
22.“There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.” — Benjamin Harrison
23.”We have not attained an ideal condition. Not all of our people are happy and prosperous; not all of them are virtuous and law-abiding. But on the whole, the opportunities offered to the individual to secure the comforts of life are better than are found elsewhere and largely better than they were here one hundred years ago.” — Benjamin Harrison
24.“It has been the hope of every patriot that a sense of justice and of respect for the law would work a gradual cure of these flagrant evils. Surely no one supposes that the present can be accepted as a permanent condition. If it is said that these communities must work out this problem for themselves, we have a right to ask whether they are at work upon it. Do they suggest any solution?” — Benjamin Harrison
25.“Lincoln had faith in time, and time has justified his faith.” — Benjamin Harrison
26.“I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap. They are too cheap when the man or woman who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow.” — Benjamin Harrison
27.”But notwithstanding all this, in many parts of our country where the colored population is large, the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and of many of their civil rights. The wrong does not expend itself upon those whose votes are suppressed. Every constituency in the Union is wronged.” — Benjamin Harrison
28.“Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.” — Benjamin Harrison
29.“The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mischievous… No poor man was ever made richer or happier by it. It is quite as illogical to despise a man because he is rich as because he is poor. Not what a man has, but what he is, settles his class. We cannot right matters by taking from one what he has honestly acquired to bestow upon another what he has not earned.” — Benjamin Harrison
30.“If you take out of your statutes, your constitution, your family life all that is taken from the Sacred Book, what would there be left to bind society together?” — Benjamin Harrison
31.“No other people have a government more worthy of their respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise and labor.” — Benjamin Harrison
32.“I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.” — Benjamin Harrison
Top 9 Benjamin Harrison Quotes – The 23rd President of the United States
Benjamin Harrison has played a crucial role in shaping the America we live in today! Here are the top 9 quotes by the famous 23rd President of the United States.
Summary of Benjamin Harrison’s Quotes and Biography
Benjamin Harrison was a man who believed in the nation’s prosperity and dedicated his life to leaving a better country for future generations. We hope that these Benjamin Harrison quotes will inspire you to believe in a better future and work hard to achieve it!
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Image Credits
“23 Benjamin Harrison” by US Department of State is marked with CC PDM 1.0.
“Benjamin Harrison” by Monroedb1 is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.
Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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