James K. Polk

I love you Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.

I am heartily rejoiced that my term is so near its close. I will soon cease to be a servant and will become a sovereign.

No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the …

With me it is emphatically true that the presidency is "no bed of roses."

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress, as well as others, than I had any conception [of], before I became President of the U.S.

Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between church and state.

The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.

It becomes us, in humility, to make our devout acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, for the inestimable civil and religious blessings with which we are favored.

Although in our country the Chief Magistrate must almost of necessity be chosen by a party and stand pledged to its principles and measures, yet in his official action he should not be the President of a part only, but of the whole people …

The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.

Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government.

By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to …

Well 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.