I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor …

- Rufus Choate

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

- Rufus Choate

Knowledge is power as well as fame.

- Rufus Choate

Appropriated to justice, to security, to reason, to restraint; where there is no respect of persons; where will is nothing and power is nothing and n…

- Rufus Choate

You don't want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but you want one whose every word is full-freigh…

- Rufus Choate

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.

- Rufus Choate

Power, carried to extremes, is always liable to reaction.

- Rufus Choate

All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, - every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every de…

- Rufus Choate

There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected…

- Rufus Choate