Notable & Quotable: President Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Wall Street Journal ^ | 3 July 2008 | Coolidge

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President Calvin Coolidge speaking on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pa.:

Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people.

The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

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He wrote his own material. He was labelled as "Silent Cal."