Gouverneur Morris Quotes

“Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

“Religion is the solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God.”

“They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light.”

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

“Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?”“You bet,” Morrie whispered.”

“I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with a fork, picking at a piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the same calm breeze that soothed me back in college.”

“Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?"-Morrie”

“In the dry places, men begin to dream. Where the rivers run sand, there is something in man that begins to flow. West of the 98TH Meridian - where it sometimes rain and it sometimes doesn’t – towns, like weeds, spring up when it rains, dry up when it stops. But in a dry climate, the husk of the plant remains. The stranger might find, as if preserved in amber, something of the green life that was once lived there, and the ghosts of men who have gone on to a better place. The withered towns are empty, but not uninhabited. Faces sometimes peer out from the broken windows, or whisper from the sagging balconies, as if this place – now that is dead – had come to life. As if empty it is forever occupied. Reproduced in THE BORSCHT BELT from The Works of Love by Wright Morris by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1949, 1951 by Wright Morris.”

“Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas.”

“In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did?”