Top 200 Calvin Coolidge Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope-nothing of man.”

— Calvin Coolidge

102. “We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the Government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong.”

— Calvin Coolidge

103. “Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to yourselves and be brief; above all be brief.”

— Calvin Coolidge

104. “The words of the President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.”

— Calvin Coolidge

105. “What we need is not more Federal government, but better local government.”

— Calvin Coolidge

106. “The only hope of a short war is to prepare for a long one.”

— Calvin Coolidge

107. “What men owe to the love and help of good women can never be told.”

— Calvin Coolidge

108. “Advertising is the most potent influence in adapting and changing the habits and modes of life affecting what we eat, what we wear, and the work and play of a whole nation.”

— Calvin Coolidge

109. “As I went about with my father, when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid someone had to work hard to earn the money to pay them.”

— Calvin Coolidge

110. “One with the law is a majority.”

— Calvin Coolidge

111. “The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country. Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil. America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility.”

— Calvin Coolidge

112. “The country is not in good condition.”

— Calvin Coolidge

113. “No enterprise can exist for itself alone.”

— Calvin Coolidge

114. “If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice.”

— Calvin Coolidge

115. “The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.”

— Calvin Coolidge

116. “The government can supply no substitute for enterprise.”

— Calvin Coolidge

117. “The presidency does not yield to definition. Like the glory of a morning sunrise, it can be experienced.”

— Calvin Coolidge

118. “Advertising is the life of trade.”

— Calvin Coolidge

119. “Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.”

— Calvin Coolidge

120. “A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else.”

— Calvin Coolidge

121. “Theodore Roosevelt was always getting himself in hot water by talking before he had to commit himself upon issues not well-defined.”

— Calvin Coolidge

122. “No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.”

— Calvin Coolidge

123. “The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of the law for the virtues of men.”

— Calvin Coolidge

124. “Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind.”

— Calvin Coolidge

125. “There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.”

— Calvin Coolidge

126. “The man who builds a factory, builds a temple.”

— Calvin Coolidge

127. “I do not want to see any of the people cringing supplicants for the favor of the Government, when they should all be independent masters of their own destiny.”

— Calvin Coolidge

128. “It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”

— Calvin Coolidge

129. “Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.”

— Calvin Coolidge

130. “I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.”

— Calvin Coolidge

131. “We do not need more knowledge, we need more character!”

— Calvin Coolidge

132. “Despotism has forever had a powerful hold upon the world. Autocratic government, not self-government, has been the prevailing state of mankind. The record of past history is the record, not of the success of republics, but of their failure.”

— Calvin Coolidge

133. “Nobody will ever forget what I’ve accomplished.”

— Calvin Coolidge

134. “If you can get enough votes so that mine will make a majority, you can have it.”

— Calvin Coolidge

135. “Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control.”

— Calvin Coolidge

136. “Business will be either better or worse.”

— Calvin Coolidge

137. “We have too much legislating by clamor, by tumult, by pressure. Representative government ceases when outside influence of any kind is substituted for the judgment of the representative.”

— Calvin Coolidge

138. “Government price-fixing once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared.”

— Calvin Coolidge

139. “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.”

— Calvin Coolidge

140. “After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.”

— Calvin Coolidge

141. “I want taxes to be less, that the people may have more.”

— Calvin Coolidge

142. “Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.”

— Calvin Coolidge

143. “The danger to America is not in the direction of the failure to maintain its economic position, but in the direction of the failure to maintain its ideals.”

— Calvin Coolidge

144. “It would be difficult to conceive a finer example of true sport.”

— Calvin Coolidge

145. “There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear.”

— Calvin Coolidge

146. “It has become the custom in our country to expect all Chief Executives, from the President down, to conduct activities analogous to an entertainment bureau. No occasion is too trivial for its promoters to invite them to attend and deliver an address.”

— Calvin Coolidge

147. “We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.”

— Calvin Coolidge

148. “I should think that an ordinary copy of the King James version would have been good enough for those Congressmen.”

— Calvin Coolidge

149. “The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”

— Calvin Coolidge

150. “The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.”

— Calvin Coolidge