Top 35 David Crockett Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead.”

— David Crockett

Featured in: Integrity Quotes

2. “You can all go to Hell, I’m going to Texas!”

— David Crockett

3. “Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks.”

— David Crockett

4. “Farewell to ye all! In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.”

— David Crockett

5. “Maker sure you’re right, then go ahead.”

— David Crockett

6. “There ain’t no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.”

— David Crockett

7. “If I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where the men are of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grows nowhere else on the face of the universal earth.”

— David Crockett

8. “We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.”

— David Crockett

9. “I would rather be politically dead than hypocritically immortalized.”

— David Crockett

10. “It was nonsense to talk about its being a sacrifice to come there; for if it were, they would not see so many grasping to be members of Congress.”

— David Crockett

11. “I had gone but a little way before I killed a fine buck, and started to go back to the boat; but on the way I came on the tracks of a large gang of elks, and so I took after them. I had followed them only a little distance when I saw them, and directly after I saw two large bucks. I.”

— David Crockett

12. “I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country here to settle.”

— David Crockett

13. “I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.”

— David Crockett

14. “I would rather be beaten, and be a man, than to be elected and be a little puppy dog.”

— David Crockett

15. “I want people to be able to get what they need to live: enough food, a place to live, and an education for their children. Government does not provide these as well as private charities and businesses.”

— David Crockett

16. “I have always supported measures and principles and not men.”

— David Crockett

17. “I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.”

— David Crockett

18. “Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.”

— David Crockett

19. “It is quite possible that someone is insane and they think they have a chance. Not insane in the clinical sense, but they may have such a strong political ambition that they blind themselves to reality.”

— David Crockett

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “Congress allows lemonade to the members and has it charged under the head of stationery-I move also that whiskey be allowed under the item of fuel.”

— David Crockett

21. “Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them.”

— David Crockett

22. “Throughout the day no time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever.”

— David Crockett

23. “The party in power, like Jonah’s gourd, grew up quickly, and will quickly fall.”

— David Crockett

24. “I have suffered my self to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never a gain elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.”

— David Crockett

25. “The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit.”

— David Crockett

26. “We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”

— David Crockett

27. “Although our great man at the head of the nation, has changed his course, I will not change mine.”

— David Crockett

28. “Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice – a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.”

— David Crockett

29. “Thare is no chance of hurrying bussiness here like in the legeslature of a State thare is such a desposition here to Show Eloquence that this will be a long Session and do no good...”

— David Crockett

30. “Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead.”

— David Crockett

31. “The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man.”

— David Crockett

32. “Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!”

— David Crockett

33. “A bulger of a place it is. The number of the ships beat me all hollow, and looked for all the world like a big clearing in the West, with the dead trees all standing.”

— David Crockett

34. “If one man in the country could take all the money, what was the use of passing any bills about it?”

— David Crockett

35. “I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me... Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them.”

— David Crockett