Lafayette Quotes

“After a week in Boston, Lafayette went to Providence for more parades, salutes, and receptions and a visit with Nathanael Greene. At a banquet with members of the General Assembly, he toasted unity among the states: "May these rising states unite in every measure, as they have united in their struggles." Fortunately, he gave his toast early; by the end of the evening, the sixty assemblymen and their guests had absorbed fifty-one bottles of Madeira, thirty-two bottles of claret, nine bottles of punch, and thirty-two bowls of rum punch-an average of a bottle and one-half (then five pints) of wine and a half-bottle of rum each. p200”
― Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette

“Lafayette told the duke, as the latter read the document, “and I see the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect document in existence.”
― Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette

“obligations to the United States, ladies and gentlemen, far surpass the services I was able to render. These date back to the time when I had the good fortune to be adopted by the United States as one of her young soldiers, as a beloved son. The approbation of the American people . . . is the greatest reward I can receive. I have stood strong and held my head high whenever, in their name, I have proclaimed the American principles of liberty, equality and social order. I have devoted myself to these principles since I was a boy, and they will remain a sacred obligation to me until I take my final breath. . . . The greatness and prosperity of the United States are spreading the light of civilization across the world—a civilization based on liberty and resistance to oppression, with political institutions based on the rights of man and republican principles of government by the people.19”
― Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette

“Lafayette was a splendid man...with a marvelous, self-depreciating sense of humor. He was, for example, balding noticeably when he reached an Indian outpost...and he calmed his wife's anxieties by noting that "I cannot lose what I do not have.”
― Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette

“The great Mass of the common People have no Religion but their Priests, no Law but their Superiors, no Moral but their Interest.”
― Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette