Top 70 Grover Cleveland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In calm water every ship has a good captain.”

— Grover Cleveland

2. “A cause worth fighting for is worth fighting for to the end.”

— Grover Cleveland

3. “The ship of democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those on board.”

— Grover Cleveland

4. “Unswerving loyalty to duty, constant devotion to truth, and a clear conscience will overcome every discouragement and surely lead the way to usefulness and high achievement.”

— Grover Cleveland

5. “I have tried so hard to do the right.”

— Grover Cleveland

6. “Above all, tell the truth.”

— Grover Cleveland

7. “Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.”

— Grover Cleveland

8. “He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.”

— Grover Cleveland

9. “I’m only waiting for my wife to grow up.”

— Grover Cleveland

10. “It is said that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.”

— Grover Cleveland

11. “Honor lies in honest toil.”

— Grover Cleveland

12. “The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.”

— Grover Cleveland

13. “Well, my dear fellow what did you expect, champagne?”

— Grover Cleveland

14. “A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.”

— Grover Cleveland

15. “If you are still in school, do not neglect your grades. Internships and other activities are fine, but when legal employers have to decide who to interview, grades play a big role in determining who makes that cut and who doesn’t.”

— Grover Cleveland

16. “Party honesty is party expediency.”

— Grover Cleveland

17. “Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.”

— Grover Cleveland

18. “I have a Congress on my hands.”

— Grover Cleveland

19. “The wage earner relies upon the ventures of confident and contented capital. This failing him, his condition is without alleviation, for he can neither prey on the misfortune of others nor hoard his labor.”

— Grover Cleveland

20. “It is no credit to me to do right. I am never under any temptation to do wrong!”

— Grover Cleveland

21. “The appointing power of the Pope is treated as a public trust, and not as a personal perquisite.”

— Grover Cleveland

22. “It is the responsibility of the citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of the government to support its citizens.”

— Grover Cleveland

23. “All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purest patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship.”

— Grover Cleveland

24. “It is better to be defeated standing for a high principle than to run by committing subterfuge.”

— Grover Cleveland

25. “Men and times change-but principles-never.”

— Grover Cleveland

26. “If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.”

— Grover Cleveland

27. “Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again.”

— Grover Cleveland

28. “No investment on earth is so safe, so sure, so certain to enrich its owners as undeveloped realty. I always advise my friends to place their savings in realty near a growing city. There is no such savings bank anywhere.”

— Grover Cleveland

29. “When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.”

— Grover Cleveland

30. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.”

— Grover Cleveland

31. “In the scheme of our national government, the presidency is preeminently the people’s office.”

— Grover Cleveland

32. “It is a condition which confronts us-not a theory.”

— Grover Cleveland

33. “No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of a law.”

— Grover Cleveland

34. “Good ball players make good citizens.”

— Grover Cleveland

35. “What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?”

— Grover Cleveland

36. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”

— Grover Cleveland

37. “I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.”

— Grover Cleveland

38. “And let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our country’s history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors.”

— Grover Cleveland

39. “I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one.”

— Grover Cleveland

Featured in: Strong Quotes

40. “Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity.”

— Grover Cleveland

41. “Some day I will be better remembered.”

— Grover Cleveland

42. “A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.”

— Grover Cleveland

43. “The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune.”

— Grover Cleveland

44. “In these sad and ominous days of mad fortune chasing, every patriotic, thoughtful citizen, whether he fishes or not, should lament that we have not among our countrymen more fishermen.”

— Grover Cleveland

45. “The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”

— Grover Cleveland

46. “After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth.”

— Grover Cleveland

47. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”

— Grover Cleveland

48. “The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization.”

— Grover Cleveland

49. “I know that human prejudice – especially that growing out of race and religion – is cruelly inveterate and lasting.”

— Grover Cleveland

50. “Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service.”

— Grover Cleveland