Skip to content

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.

— Martin Van Buren Inaugural address (1837)

Another quote →

Topics

History

More quotes by Martin Van Buren

I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men... in receiving from the people the sacred trust confided to my illustrious predecessor.

Inaugural address (1837)

There is a power in public opinion in this country -and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers- which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.

How imperious, then, is the obligation imposed upon every citizen, in his own sphere of action, whether limited or extended, to exert himself in perpetuating a condition of things so singularly happy.

Inaugural address (1837)

From a small community we have risen to a people powerful in numbers and in strength; but with our increase has gone hand in hand the progress of just principles.

Inaugural address (1837)

All Martin Van Buren quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Martin Van Buren (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.