Party honesty is party expediency. - Grover Cleveland

We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man's enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister Republic thence, and joined with answering rays a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression, until Liberty enlightens the world.

I believe the most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of the government, and compel the members of the legislative branch to see that they have responsibilities of their own, grave and well-defined, which their official oaths bind them sacredly to perform.

I have tried so hard to do right.