Top 70 William Jennings Bryan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

— William Jennings Bryan

Featured in: Focus Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Winning Quotes, Choices Quotes, Graduation Quotes

2. “Real estate is the best investment for small savings. More money is made from the rise in real estate values than from all other causes combined.”

— William Jennings Bryan

3. “The greatest things ever done on Earth have been done little by little.”

— William Jennings Bryan

4. “If the Bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it.”

— William Jennings Bryan

5. “On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.”

— William Jennings Bryan

6. “If the Bible and the microscope do not agee, the microscope is wrong.”

— William Jennings Bryan

7. “Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.”

— William Jennings Bryan

8. “Selfish interest is one of the most common obstructions to the advance of truth.”

— William Jennings Bryan

9. “If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.”

— William Jennings Bryan

10. “The Rock of Ages is more important than the age of rocks.”

— William Jennings Bryan

11. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.”

— William Jennings Bryan

12. “Our government conceived in freedom and purchased with blood can be preserved only by constant vigilance.”

— William Jennings Bryan

13. “If we steal a man’s purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man’s money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.”

— William Jennings Bryan

14. “The large banking interests were deeply interested in the World War because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”

— William Jennings Bryan

15. “The Old Testament gave us the law; the New Testament reveals the love upon which the law rests.”

— William Jennings Bryan

16. “Christ has made of death a narrow starlit strip between the companionships of yesterday and the reunions of tomorrow.”

— William Jennings Bryan

17. “I can not wish you success in your effort to reject the treaty because while it may win the fight it may destroy our cause. My plan cannot fail if the people are with us and we ought not to succeed unless we do have the people with us.”

— William Jennings Bryan

18. “Only those who believe attempt the seemingly impossible.”

— William Jennings Bryan

19. “An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.”

— William Jennings Bryan

20. “When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.”

— William Jennings Bryan

21. “If matter mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay?”

— William Jennings Bryan

22. “Principles are eternal...”

— William Jennings Bryan

23. “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

— William Jennings Bryan

24. “One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.”

— William Jennings Bryan

25. “The wisdom of the Bible writers is more than human; the prophecies proclaim a Supreme Ruler who, though inhabiting all space, deigns to speak through the hearts and minds and tongues of His children.”

— William Jennings Bryan

26. “God may be a matter of indifference to the evolutionists, and a life beyond may have no charm for them, but the mass of mankind will continue to worship their creator and continue to find comfort in the promise of their Savior that he has gone to prepare a place for them.”

— William Jennings Bryan

27. “Greed is at the bottom of most of the wrong-doing with which government has to deal.”

— William Jennings Bryan

28. “Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments – a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared.”

— William Jennings Bryan

29. “Facts mean nothing unless they are rightly understood, rightly related and rightly interpreted.”

— William Jennings Bryan

30. “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

— William Jennings Bryan

31. “If it weren’t for the lawyers we wouldn’t need them.”

— William Jennings Bryan

32. “Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.”

— William Jennings Bryan

33. “All the ills from which America suffers can be traced back to the teaching of evolution. It would be better to destroy every other book ever written, and save just the first three verses of Genesis.”

— William Jennings Bryan

34. “The essence of patriotism lies in a willingness to sacrifice for one’s country, just as true greatness finds expression, not in blessings enjoyed, but in good bestowed.”

— William Jennings Bryan

35. “Success is brought by continued labor and continued watchfulness. We must struggle on, not for one moment hesitate, nor take one backward step.”

— William Jennings Bryan

36. “The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear, and get a record of successful experiences behind you.”

— William Jennings Bryan

37. “Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis-it is millions of guesses strung together.”

— William Jennings Bryan

38. “If evolution wins, Christianity goes!”

— William Jennings Bryan

39. “If there is no God there is no hereafter. When, therefore, one drives God out of the universe he closes the door of hope upon himself.”

— William Jennings Bryan

40. “The great political questions are in their final analysis great moral questions.”

— William Jennings Bryan

41. “The money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.”

— William Jennings Bryan

42. “Evolution seems to close the heart to some of the plainest spiritual truths while it opens the mind to the wildest guesses advanced in the name of science.”

— William Jennings Bryan

43. “Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.”

— William Jennings Bryan

44. “No greater victory can be won by citizens or soldiers than to transform temporary foes into permanent friends.”

— William Jennings Bryan

45. “A man who murders another shortens by a few brief years the life of a human being; but he who votes to increase the burden of debts upon the people of the United States assumes a graver responsibility.”

— William Jennings Bryan

46. “The poor man is called a socialist if he believes that the wealth of the rich should be divided among the poor, but the rich man is called a financier if he devises a plan by which the pittance of the poor can be converted to his use.”

— William Jennings Bryan

47. “If God himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ.”

— William Jennings Bryan

48. “We have our thoughts, our hopes, our fears, and yet we know that in a moment a change may come over any one of us that will convert a living, breathing human being into a mass of lifeless clay.”

— William Jennings Bryan

49. “Darwin begins by assuming life upon the earth; the Bible reveals the source of life and chronicles its creation.”

— William Jennings Bryan

50. “Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.”

— William Jennings Bryan