For Presidents Day, See if You Can Identify the President Who Made Each of the Following Observations

Business Insider found an inspiring quotation from each of the presidents. The full item from Business Insider is available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-inspirational-quotes-from-us-presidents-2015-2

You will probably be surprised by how often the presidents have emphasized the value of persistence.

I have turned that item in Business Insider into a quiz. The answers will be in the next post.

This won’t be easy. If you are able to identify the speaker of even 10 of the 43 quotations, I think that will constitute a strong score.

“A long visit to a friend is often a great bore. Never make people twice glad.”
“A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.”
“All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.”
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”
“An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.”
“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
“Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.”
“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.”
“For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.”
“Good ball players make good citizens.”
“Honest conviction is my courage; the Constitution is my guide.”
“I contend that the strongest of all governments is that which is most free.”
“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”
“I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.”
“If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe.”
“If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.”
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
“It is by a thorough knowledge of the whole subject that [people] are enabled to judge correctly of the past and to give a proper direction to the future.”
“It would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe.”
“Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met—obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.”
“Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story, and along the way, we start to realize we are not the author.”
“May the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country’s peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family.”
“Neither a wise man or a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
“No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit.”
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb … Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.”
“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to be supplied is light, not heat.”
“One voice can change a room. And if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”
“Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.”
“Piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
“The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.”
“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
“The founding of our Nation was more than a political event; it was an act of faith, a promise to Americans and to the entire world. The Declaration of Independence declared that people can govern themselves, that they can live in freedom with equal rights, that they can respect the rights of others.”
“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.”
“The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.”
“We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.”
“Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality.”
“When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.”
“You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.”
“Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you.”