Calvin Coolidge Quotes

“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you”
― Calvin Coolidge

“In January 1924, as a sweeping immigration measure awaited presidential signature, American Jewish Committee leader Louis Marshall asked to meet with President Calvin Coolidge to urge a veto. Coolidge refused to see him. The president's views were summed up in an article he had written a few years earlier in Good Housekeeping magazine, titled "Whose Country Is This?" "[B]iological laws show us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races," Coolidge wrote.”
― J.J. Goldberg

“In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants.
During the debate, Coolidge told the American people:
"Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action... We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.”
― Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism

“In what manner he would have performed himself if the holy angels had shoved the Depression forward a couple of years - this we can only guess, and one man's hazard is as good as another's. My own is that he would have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones - that is, by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons.... He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.... Counting out Harding as a cipher only, Dr. Coolidge was preceded by one World Saver and followed by two more. What enlightened American, having to choose between any of them and another Coolidge, would hesitate for an instant? There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.”
― H.L. Mencken, American Mercury: Facsimile Edition of Volume I

“President Coolidge's Christmas message is published in newspapers across the country: 'Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”
― Peter Pauper Press, A Century of Christmas Memories, 1900-1999

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -Calvin Coolidge”
― Amity Shlaes, Coolidge

“The man who builds a factory builds a temple, . . . the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.”
― Calvin Coolidge, Have Faith In Massachusetts

“For some reason, the former President failed to rise to the response of the audience to his unconscious humor. He began a phrase modestly,
"When I was in Washington," being a euphemism for
"When I was President" and the audience burst into laughter. Afterwards, he said sadly to Mrs. Coolidge:
"They seemed to be in a strange mood. I never spoke to an audience which laughed before.""
Yet a few weeks later when an enthusiastic woman Republican gurgled at him:
"Oh, Mr. Coolidge, I enjoyed your speech so much that I stood up during the whole speech. I couldn't get a seat."
Quipped Coolidge: "So did I!”
― William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge