As this is the first time I have had the floor, it may be well for me now to confess, that I am in the habit of freely imputing errors to my fellow-men.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

But, although America cannot be justly charged with violating the rights of Turkey, Turkey nevertheless can be justly charged with violating the rights of America.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. - Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace: but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

The only ground on which a neutral State can claim respect at the hands of belligerents is, that, so far as she is concerned, their rights are protected.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

Truth and mercy require the exertion - never the suppression, of man's noble rights and powers.
- Gerrit Smith Quote

We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.
- Gerrit Smith Quote