I couldn’t be two faced. If I had two faces, I wouldn’t wear this one. more…
Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend? more…
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ more…
My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter. more…
The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. more…
This is essentially a people’s contest… whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men – to lift artificial weights from all shoulders – to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all – to afford all, an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life. more…
Fondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. more…
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. more…
Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence? more…
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all, and it comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible, except with the passing of time. more…
I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him. more…
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. more…
I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views. more…
I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it. more…
Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. more…
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. more…
The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds. more…
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance. more…
If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same. more…
I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground. more…
That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. more…
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights. more…
The Cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats. more…
Seriously, I do not think I fit for the presidency. more…
Life may not always be a bed of roses. All of us are aware of this fact. There are numerous times in life when we have to face disappointments. These quotes and sayings surely do inspire and help us to look forward and enjoy the new pathways coming our way. These quotes also lend a different perspective to life, which makes moving forward not a very difficult task.I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause. more…
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. more…
We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot. more…
The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control. more…
We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. more…
Without the assistance of that Divine Being…I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. more…
My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. more…
Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life. more…
I walk slowly, but never backwards. more…
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. more…
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. more…
That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance. more…
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. more…
Always remember: Life is for enjoying. more…
I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it. more…
We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read. more…
Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good. more…
A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. more…
To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards of men. more…
Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. more…
If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation. more…
The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. more…
You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. more…
The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes. more…
I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist. more…
Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil… more…
He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national. more…
When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. more…
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. more…
Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object. more…
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it. more…
We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe – nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself. more…
Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. more…
You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. more…
I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question – that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, – I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation. more…
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. more…
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. more…
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. more…
Military glory-that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy… more…
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. more…
Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence. more…
We must ask where we are and whither we are tending. more…
If you trust, you will be disappointed occasionally, but if you mistrust, you will be miserable all the time. more…
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves. more…
My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I…fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out. more…
I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice. more…
During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals! more…
The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? more…
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness… more…
Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. more…
Nothing is stronger than gentleness. more…
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side. more…
With high hope for the future, no prediction is ventured. more…
Every person is responsible for his own looks after 40. more…
Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica. more…
A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. more…
While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. more…
That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrepect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. more…
Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone. Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security. more…
Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a “sacred right of self-government.” These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other. more…
Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases. more…
The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible. more…
The good old maxims of the Bible are applicable, and truly applicable to human affairs, and in this as in other things, we may say here that he who is not for us is against us; he would gathereth not with us scattereth. more…
I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy. more…
Remembering that Peter denied his Lord with an oath, after most solemnly protesting that he never would, I will not swear I will make no committals; but I do think I will not. more…
Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. more…
I turn, then, and look to the American people and to that God who has never forsaken them. more…
We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people. more…
And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts. more…
The President responded very impressively, saying that he was deeply sensible of his need of Divine assistance. He had sometime thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God’s hands of accomplishing a great work and he certainly was not unwilling to be. Perhaps, however, God’s way of accomplishing the end which the memorialists have in view may be different from theirs. more…
And while it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light He gives, trusting that in His own good time, and wise way, all will yet be well. more…
But I must add that the U.S. government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches. When an individual, in a church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such take care of themselves. It will not do for the U.S. to appoint Trustees, Supervisors, or other agents for the churches. more…
Relying, as I do, upon the Almighty Power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions which you have just read, with the support which I receive from Christian men, I shall not hesitate to use all the means at my control to secure the termination of this rebellion, and will hope for success. more…
I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call, but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called. more…
Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result. more…
Nevertheless, amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance on God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right. more…
Submitted to the Sec. of War. On principle I dislike an oath which requires a man to swear he has not done wrong. It rejects the Christian principle of forgiveness on terms of repentance. I think it is enough if the man does no wrong hereafter. more…
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. more…
The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it. more…
At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the christian world, to history, and on my final account to God. more…
While we are grateful to all the brave men and officers for the events of the past few days, we should, above all, be very grateful to Almighty God, who gives us victory. more…
God bless the Methodist Church – bless all the churches – and blessed be God, Who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.
To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, [“] and to preach there-from that, “In the sweat of other mans faces shalt thou eat bread,” to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity. more…
We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time. more…
God bless the soldiers and seamen, with all their brave commanders. more…
While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election; and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result. more…
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humilation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it. more…
The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He, from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. more…
I am busily engaged in study of the Bible. more…
This nation under God more…
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God … and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. more…
Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. more…
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation… more…
Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. more…
When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul. more…
It is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones. more…
A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. more…
the better angels of our nature more…
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration. more…
We shall meanly lose or nobly save the last hope of earth. more…
Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. more…
It is for us and our time…to say the right makes might. more…
With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. more…
The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must rise to the occasion. more…
I will either be America’s greatest president or its last. more…
Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite more…
The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it. more…
There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one. more…
All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself … are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny. more…
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me. more…
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” more…
Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office. more…
Democracy is “government of, by and for the people”. more…
I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the Declaration of Independence that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. more…
No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. more…
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution. more…
You can not fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed. more…
If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. more…
Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better – quite happy – if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education…. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life. more…
I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me… more…
I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing. more…
I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog gripe, and chew & choke, as much as possible. more…
Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag. more…
Towering genius disdains a beaten path … It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction. more…
In the world’s history certain inventions and discoveries occurred of peculiar value, on account of their great efficiency in facilitating all other inventions and discoveris. Of these were the art of writing and of printing, the discovery of America, and the introduction of patent laws. The date of the first … is unknown; but it certainly was as much as fifteen hundred years before the Christian era; the second-printing-came in 1436, or nearly three thousand years after the first. The others followed more rapidly-the discovery of America in 1492, and the first patent laws in 1624. more…
Next came the patent laws. These began in England in 1624, and in this country with the adoption of our Constitution. Before then any man [might] instantly use what another man had invented, so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this, secured to the inventor for a limited time exclusive use of his inventions, and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things. more…
What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle – the sheet anchor of American republicanism. more…
We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the territories, where our votes will reach it. more…
In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. more…
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” more…
In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. more…
I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union. more…
I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end. more…
Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end. more…
I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent. more…
I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction. more…
Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. more…
I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death-to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old. more…
So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself. more…
I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world. more…
If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. more…
Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. more…
I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that ‘while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the Acts of Congress.’ If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.
We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.
Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.
The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor-the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all-gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.
No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.
Labor is the true standard of value.
The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point.
I am always for the man who wishes to work.
If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive-all would have perished by want of subsistence.
Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.
Wanting to work is so rare a merit, that it should be encouraged.
Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.
Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes-useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it’s just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.
Work, work, work, is the main thing.
And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor – where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.
If you intend to go to work there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you can not get along anywhere.
I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.
Half finished work generally proves to be labor lost.
And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.
The working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous…
The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow [sic] which can be done to-day [sic]. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.
Law is nothing else but the best reason of wise men applied for ages to the transactions and business of mankind.
Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.
When I have a particular case in hand, I have that motive and feel an interest in the case, feel an interest in ferreting out the questions to the bottom, love to dig up the question by the roots and hold it up and dry it before the fires of the mind.
If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.
Again, a law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.
No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression. My conscience is my own – my creators – not man’s. I shall never sink the rights of mankind to the malice, wrong, or avarice of another’s wishes, though those wishes come to me in the relation of client and attorney.
In law it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.
When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.
I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn’t know anything.
Dear Sir: Yours of the 24th. asking ‘the best mode of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the law’ is received. The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone’s Commentaries, and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty’s Pleading, Greenleaf’s Evidence, & Story’s Equity &c.; in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing.
Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty.
I understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction . . . . All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.
In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity.
I see a very dark cloud on America’s horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome.
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.
Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling.
How many times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that I was too lazy to be anything but a lawyer.
Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.
Don’t kneel to me, that is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.
I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this his almost chosen people.
I destroy my enemy if I make him my friend.
I trust that as He shall further open the way, I will be ready to walk therein, relying on His help and trusting in His goodness and wisdom.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens.
Teach hope to all, despair to none.
I do not boast that God is on my side, I humbly pray that I am on God’s side.
Let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.
If you love something, set it free.
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that He would reveal it directly to me [] These are not, however, the days of miracles [] I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right.
In order to win a man to your cause, you must first reach his heart, the great high road to his reason.
The surest way to reveal one’s character is not through adversity but by giving them power.
I hear you have abolitionists here. We have a few in Illinois, but we shot one the other day.
It is not ‘Is God on my side’, but ‘Am I on God’s side’.
You can’t fool all the people all the time.
Quotations on the Internet are often attributed incorrectly.
If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others
Believing everybody is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.
No man ever got lost on a straight road.
You can’t trust every quote on the internet.
Think of strangers as friends you not met yet.
The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.
Oh, that [his Thanksgiving Message] is some of Seward’s nonsense, and it pleases the fools.
If there is no military need for the building, leave it alone, neither putting anyone in or out of it, except on finding some one preaching or practicing treason, in which case lay hands on him, just as if he were doing the same thing in any other building.
There was the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got all of that Church. My wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some in the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist and had talked of fighting a duel.
I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.
What are you gonna do for a face when the baboon wants his ass back?
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree and can never be reversed.
It is the man who does not want to express an opinion whose opinion I want.
Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.
As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.
If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will probably be about right. Beware of being assailed by one and praised by the other.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live.
Let us hopethat by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.
But let the past as nothing be. For the future my view is that the fight must go on.
Thus let bygones be bygones. Let past differences, as nothing be.
I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never espouse their quarrels on either side. My sincere wish is that both sides will allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.
Others have been made fools of by the girls; but, this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,made a fool of myself.
The enthusiastic uprising of the people in our cause, is our great reliance; and we can not safely give it any check, even thoughit overflows, and runs in channels not laid down in any chart.
The political horizon looks dark and lowering; but the people, under Providence, will set all right.
I want in all cases to do right.
[Uniting workers should not] lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property.
In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.
As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I can not enter the ring on the money basis-first, because, in the main, it iswrong; and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money. I say, in the main, the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right, and indispensable.
Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don’t [sic] want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, wouldtell him that you have reason to believe he is mistaken.
Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief.
And then, the negro being doomed, and damned, and forgotten, to everlasting bondage, is the white man quite certain that the tyrant demon will not turn upon him too?
What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?
The ant, who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest, will furiously defend the fruit of his labor, against whatever robber assails him. So plain, that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly know that he is wronged.
I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.
Our political problem now is “Can we, as a nation, continue together permanentlyforever-half slave, and half free?” The problem is too mighty for me. May God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.
I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.
In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.
I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing, that no man desires for himself.
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.
We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.
It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat, if I neglect my business this year as well as last.
We must work earnestly in the best light He gives us.
Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.
We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.
Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.
We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.
The will of God prevails.
God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time.
Gratefully accepting the proffered honor, [to inscribe a new legal work to him] I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.
The unpleasant events you are passing from will not have been profitless to you.
Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure-a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.
I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch’s brow.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.
My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education.
I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has,and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way I came to the law.
Every head should be cultivated.
When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three…. The little advanceI now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.
Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two [good and evil].
In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; asbad and good.
I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.
A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money.
If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two yearsof age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.
The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for allcommanders.
Much is being said about peace; and no man desires peace more ardently than I. Still I am yet unprepared to give up the Union fora peace which, so achieved, could not be of much duration.
Now, and ever, I shall do all in my power for peace, consistently with the maintenance of government.
Legislation and adjudication must follow, and conform to, the progress of society.
The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful.
Doubtless you begin to understand how disagreeable it is to me to do a thing arbitrarily, when it is unsatisfactory to others associated with me.
But fight we must; and conquer we shall; in the end.
If I had my way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my way this war would have been ended before this.
I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men.
I am not a very sentimental man; and the best sentiment I can think of is, that if you collect the signatures of all persons who are no less distinguished than I, you will have a very undistinguishing mass of names.
The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had orderedhis punishment commuted to imprisonmentand had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.
I was elected a Captain of Volunteers-a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.
I was born and have ever remaind [sic] in the most humble walks of life.
I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me.
Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises verywell, considering we never controlled him much.
Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of menours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.
No one has needed favours more than I, and generally, few have been less unwilling to accept them; but in this case, favour to me,would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it.
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?
Gen. Schurz thinks I was a little cross in my late note to you. If I was, I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.
Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.
I was raised to farm work.
I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.
You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.
It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free institutions we enjoy, have developed the powers, and improved the condition, of our whole people, beyond any example in the world.
There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal.
The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client.
You must think I am a high-priced man…. Fifteen dollars is enough for the job. I send you a receipt for fifteen dollars, and return to you a ten-dollar bill.
As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.
I am not an accomplished lawyer.
Nor must Uncle Sam’s Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broadbay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.
If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to bevery much chagrined.
[If not re-elected in 1864] then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.
You may have a wen or a cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way tocure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body.
In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment’s sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.
There are so many terrible, empty motivational quotes on the Internet.
The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things
Life is hard but so very beautiful
Discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most.
Nothing in this world is impossible to a willing heart.
A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.
Quotes found on the internet are not always accurate.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
He who represents himself has a fool for a client
I could not sleep when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; …This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north, and bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west.
There’ s nothing good in war. Except its ending.
Whether you look for the good or look for the bad in a person, you’ll find it.” A. Lincoln
The greatest lessons I have every learned were at my mother’s knees… All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance.
Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail… A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.
I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.
Money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace & conspire against it in times of adversity.
In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.
Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.
The problem with the internet is that anyone can just make stuff up
Violence begins where knowledge ends.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing….
God is the silent partner in ALL great enterprises.
Writing is the great invention of the world.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not ‘can any of us imagine better?, but ‘can we all do better?
Every man has a right to be equal with every other man.
if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading
I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.
You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
Why don’t you laugh? If I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.
IF you are going to fight, don’t let them talk you into negotiating. But, if you are going to negotiate, don’t let them talk you into fighting.
To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.
The validity of internet quotes are getting sketchy nowadays
Abraham Lincoln was asked by an aide about the church service he had attended. Lincoln responded that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent and the topic relevant. The aide said, “Then it was a good service?” Lincoln responded, “No.” The aide protested, “But, Mr. President, you said that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent, and that the topic was relevant.” “Yes,” replied Lincoln, “but he didn’t challenge us to do any great thing.
If we exchange one dollar, we both have one dollar each. But if we exchange one good thought, we both have two good thoughts
For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country’s cause. The highest merit, then is due to the soldier.
Never trust quotes on the internet
You have confidence in yourself, which is valuable, if not an indispensable quality.
Your organization will take on the personality of its top leaders
I never tire of reading Tom Paine.
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.
No organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. .. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions.
I shall always think of myself first and foremost… as a hunter.
Laughter is the joyous universal evergreen of life!
I say ‘try’; if we never try, we shall never succeed.
I never trusted a man who never smoked or drank.
Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration
Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.
Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.
You can have anything you want, if you want it badly enough.
It is not our frowning battlements…or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land….Our defence is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.
I will do what I think is right and when I discover that it is wrong, I will change it.
When arguing with a fool, make sure the opponent isn’t doing the exact same thing.
When I left Springfield [to become President] I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.
The president is the cube of ice one places in the pot of a houseplant, providing a steady amount of nourishment over the course of a hot day. A good description of the job and also a fantastic bit of practical household advice.
I … ran for Legislature [in 1832] … and was beaten-the only time I have been beaten by the people.
I hold the value of life is to improve one’s condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing, I am for that thing.
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true [cure] is in the next election, and not in the treachery of the person elected.
But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both.
I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.
I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.
It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them.
Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday – that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?
Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.
The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so, for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it, we have before us, the chief material enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.
The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.
We shall not fail – if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?
We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.
In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business-no variety-it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.
Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.
The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, “Truth is the daughter of Time.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not…the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army…our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms….
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.
If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.
A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.
I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.
The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.
Whatever spiteful fools may say, Each jealous ranting yelper, No woman ever went astray, Without a man to help her
Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.
The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.
The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
Reputation is like fine china: Once broken it’s very hard to repair.
The problem with internet quotes is that you cant always depend on their accuracy
Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty
Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.
I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
By the ‘mud-sill’ theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be – all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all.
If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes – no other marks or brands recollected.
The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am. None who would do more to preserve it.
I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right.
I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes … I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.
I told myself, “Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means.” So I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father’s house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what “demonstrate” means, and went back to my law studies.
I never did ask more, nor ever was willing to accept less, than for all the States, and the people thereof, to take and hold their places, and their rights, in the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. For this alone have I felt authorized to struggle; and I seek neither more nor less now.
If I have one vice and I can call it nothing else it is not able to say ‘no’.
Killing the dog does not cure the bite.
I have always believed that a good laugh was good for both the mental and physical digestion.
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.
As the problems are new, we must disenthrall ourselves from the past.
When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, “I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.”
President Lincoln was once criticized for his attitude toward his enemies. “Why do you try to make friends of them?” asked an associate. “You should try to destroy them.” “Am I not destroying my enemies,” Lincoln gently replied, “when I make them my friends?”
Our attitude is more honest and more consistent than our words.
Senator [Stephen] Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature can not be changed
With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semicolin; it’s a useful little chap
The only security a man can ever have is the ability to do a job uncommonly well.
If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.
I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me – and I think He has – I believe I am ready.
Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.
I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.
We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?
Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.
When I got him out he was near froze solid and shivering. He was shaking so hard that I wasted half a glass of whiskey trying to aim it for his mouth. Must have got enough of it into him, though, since it did seem to bring him back to life.
I belive that people should fight for what they believe and only what they believe.
I am struggling to maintain the government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it.
Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both.
Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice.
What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea-coasts, our army and our navy. … Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. … you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
Without Divine assistance I can not succeed; with it I can not fail.
It is better then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it – keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it; for as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.
Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me
you can’t escape tomorrow’s responsibilities by evading it today
Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.
In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it.
I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world…enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
Don’t judge a man by the size of his ego or his heart, but on the epicness of his beard and the beautiful woman on his arm
The written word may be man’s greatest invention. It allows us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.
Most people are as happy as they want to be.
Commitment is what transforms a promise into a reality… Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
Bad promises are better broken than kept.
I do the very best I can, I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won’t matter. If I’m wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won’t make a difference.
As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book.
Nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world.
I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.
On the whole, my impression is that mercy bears richer fruits than any other attribute.
in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.
The health you enjoy is largely your choice
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.
Don’t swap horses in the middle of the stream.
The press has no better friend than I am, no one who is more ready to acknowledge . . . its tremendous power for both good and evil.
I always [or “often”] walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.
Everybody appreciates a compliment.
I have never united myself to any church because I found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize the articles of belief and the usual confession of faith.
I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself.
I cannot speak so confidently about the fighting qualities of the Eastern men, or what are called Yankees – not knowing myself particularly to whom the appellation belongs – but this I do know – if the Southerners think that man for man they are better than our Illinois men, or western men generally, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake.
I hold that while a man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.
A man’s legs must be long enough to reach the ground.
If 600,000 people have to die in order for the nation to live, then 600,000 people will die.
There is no greater injustice than to wring your profits from the sweat of another man’s brow.
We will make converts day by day; we will grow strong by the violence and injustice of our adversaries. And, unless truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority after a while.
All the armies of Europe combined could not by force make a track upon the Blue Ridge, or take a drink from the Ohio. If we are to be destroyed, we must do it ourselves.
I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us.
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.
You are young, and I am older; You are hopeful, I am not- Enjoy life, ere it grow colder- Pluck the roses ere they rot.
Not everything you read on the internet is true
Everything you see on the internet is real.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.
You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps, I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid.
Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and confirm that you didn’t do the assigned readings before the strategic planning retreat.
The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine.
The problem with a politician’s quote on Facebook is you do’ know whether or not they really said it.
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
And whereas this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.
I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me
I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.
There’s no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.
I generally don’t trust quotes from the internet.
It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.
There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.
I can not but hate the prospect of slavery’s expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.
I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down but I bite my lip and keep quiet.
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.
I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement I have the best of the bargain.
I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.
The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was’.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.
I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the war.
I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, according to the bond of service – the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am responsible to them.
You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional – I think differently.
But the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.
Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.
You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union.
And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonnet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation…
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.
It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children’s children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives.
I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.
There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.
We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.
I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.
We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.
I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
The Lord spared the fitten and the rest he seen fitten to die.
He has got the slows, Mr. Blair.
I can’t spare this man, he fights!
Lamon, that speech won’t scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
I can make brigadier generals, but i can’t make horses.
My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or destroy Slavery.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free…
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.
You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike.
My God! My God! What will the country say?
The trouble with Hooker is that he’s got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be.
Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there.
confused and Stunned, like a duck hit on the head.
It’s bad. It’s damned bad.
I failed, I failed, and that is about all that can be said about it.
There is really no crisis except an artificial one…If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end.
I know the hole he went in at, but I can’t tell you what hole he will come out of.
With this honor devolves upon you also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so under God it will sustain you.
The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.
It is a good face. I am glad this war is over at last.
My Dear McClellan, if you don’t want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully.
If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they’d have to sleep standing up.
His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by oiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.
As a nation we began by declaring that all me are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.
If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.
No State, upon it own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally nothing. I therefore consider that the Union is unbroken. There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless forced upon the national authority.
I don’t s’pose anybody on earth likes gingerbread better’n I do-and gets less’n I do.
It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.
With malice towards none; with charity for all….
Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
Character is the tree, reputation is the shadow.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
If they do kill me, I shall never die another death.
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were felt by the whole human race, there would not be one cheerful face left on earth.
Upon the subject of education … I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.
Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents.
Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?
The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
I am superstitious. I have scarcely known a party, preceding an election, to call in help from the neighboring states, but they lost the state.
He said that he felt like the boy that stumped his toe, it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.
As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from, so must it be with a government.
I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.
I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other mans rights that, each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of no other State, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole.
Singular indeed that the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint.
This extraordinary war in which we are engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people, but the most heavily upon the soldier. For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country’s cause. The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier.
Honor to the Soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause. Honor also to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best can, the same cause, honor to him, only less than to him, who braves, for the common good, the storms of heaven and the storms of battle.
It is my ambition and desire to so administer the affairs of the government while I remain President that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend remaining and that one shall be down inside me.
I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.
Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then these?, any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he the president is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature of things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?
Senator Stephen Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshal ships, and cabinet appointments, charge ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.
I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter for that I have determined for myself.
I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me and I think He has I believe I am ready.
It is better, then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it, keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.
The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer, was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.
The President to-night has a dream: He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said: He is a very common-looking man. The President replied: The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says, You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.
I don’t like that man. I’m going to have to get to know him better.
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.
Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these I reckon will give you a good lift.
Peace will come soon and come to stay, and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their cases and pay the cost.
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
The workingmen are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous.
It is easiest to be all things to all men, but it is not honest. Self-respect must be sacrificed every hour in the day.
I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution by any hypercritical rules.
Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual manners for the public good.
To keep silent when we should protest, makes cowards of men.
People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
If ever this free people, if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office – that is, a way to live without work.
We shall nobody save or meanly lose the last best hope.
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.
He who does something at the heat of one regiment will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.
Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear that charter of his own and his children’s liberty.
To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.
This is a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, they cannot long retain it.
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.
Gold is good in its place but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not can any of us imagine better? but, can we all do better?
Do’ criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We… will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
If a house was on fire there could be but two parties. One in favor of putting out the fire. Another in favor of the house burning.
You ca’ make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God, can not long retain it.
To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.
Abraham Lincoln was asked by an aide about the church service he had attended. Lincoln responded that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent and the topic relevant. The aide said, “Then it was a good service?” Lincoln responded, “No.” The aide protested, “But, Mr. President, you said that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent, and that the topic was relevant.” “Yes,” replied Lincoln, “but he did’ challenge us to do any great thing.
The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day.
It must now atone in blood for its complicity in wickedness.
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy.
Never do anything for anyone who can just as well do it themself
If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.
Too big to cry too young to laugh…
You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
I think I stand where that man stands.
To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.
Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then… find the way.
I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.
You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!
We trust, sir, that God is on our side. It is more important to know that we are on God’s side.
The person who is incapable of making a mistake, is incapable of anything.
The war, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits.
IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COULD LEARN WHAT I KNOW OF THE FIERCE HATRED OF THE PRIESTS OF ROME AGAINST OUR INSTITUTIONS, OUR SCHOOLS, OUR MOST SACRED RIGHTS, AND OUR SO DEARLY BOUGHT LIBERTIES, THEY WOULD DRIVE THEM OUT AS TRAITORS!
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.
It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God’s people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.
The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom, and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.
There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.
It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. -as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.
Peace will come soon to stay, and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure their cases and pay the costs.
The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man’s course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.
It is a pleasure to be able to quote lines to fit any occasion…
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.
I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.
At 50, if you are on a diet on your birthday, you can’t eat a piece of your birthday cake. So grab two, a piece in each hand and, lo and behold, you will be on a balanced diet! Happy birthday, old chum!
Talk to the jury as though your client’s fate depends on every word you utter.
No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression.
The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.
A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed had not labor first existed.
Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.
Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generations of men-and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.
Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.
We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.
I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other mans rightsthat each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of no other State, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole.
I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.
You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.
I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I dont believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
My friends I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.
We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.
I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.
I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
The struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.
With the Catching Ends the Pleasure of the Chase.
The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was not made to conceal or destroy the apple, but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture.
As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;-let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty.
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever-it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
[I]f the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting, the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their Government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
[T]he man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Its authors meant it to be… a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object
You cannot fail unless you quit.
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
I cannot imaging anyone looking at the sky and denying God.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.
I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.
There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
. . . peace is a thing which a person must be willing to fight for . . .
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.
The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.
It has been said of the world’s history hitherto that might makes right. It is for us and for our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might.
The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.
It is much easier to ride a horse in the direction it is going.
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?
The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another mans right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
The President to-night has a dream:He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said:He is a very common-looking man. The President replied:The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.
A day spent helping no one but yourself is a day wasted.
I could write shorter sermons but when I get started I’m too lazy to stop
The land, the earth God gave to man for his home … should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society … any more than the air or water.
Laws change; people die; the land remains.
You can always lie to others and hide your actions from them… but you can not fool yourself
Tell the truth and you won’t have so much to remember
A fellow once came to me to ask for an appointment as a minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally, he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers. It is sometimes well to be humble …
Honor is better than honors.
If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.
Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.
We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience.
The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.
A long visit to a friend is often a great bore. Never make people twice glad.
Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit…
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed. They always have been, they always will be beaten.
Be excellent and party on dudes.
A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.
It is my pleasure that my children are free and happy, and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents.
I have just read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses, Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the Battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?
A new book is like a friend that I have yet to meet
The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the constitution that no man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
None seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing but from the abuse of a very good thing
What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.
Always let your subordinates know that the honor will be all theirs if they succeed and the blame will be yours if they fail.
Our adversaries [ the Confederate States of America ] have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words “all men are created equal.” Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit “We, the People,” and substitute “We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States.” Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view, the rights of men, and the authority of the people?
When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self evident lie” The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day-for burning fire-crackers!!!
Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.
The very spot where grew the bread that formed my bones, I see. How strange, old field, on thee to tread, and feel I’m part of thee.
Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
Adversity does not make us frail; it only shows us how frail we are.
Money possesses no value to the state other than that given to it by circulation.
Capital has its proper place and is entitled to every protection. The wages of men should be recognized in the structure of and in the social order as more important than the wages of money [interest].
No duty is more imperative for the government than the duty it ;owes the people to furnish them with a sound and uniform currency, an of regulating the circulation of the medium of exchange so that labor will be protected from a vicious currency [private bank-created, interest-bearing debt], and commerce will be facilitated by cheap and safe exchanges.
The available supply of gold and silver being wholly inadequate to permit the issuance of coins of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin in the volume required to serve the needs of the People, some other basis for the issue of currency must be developed, and some means other than that of convertibility into coin must be developed to prevent undue fluctuation in the value of paper currency or any other substitute for money intrinsic value that may come into use.
Government should stand behind its currency and credit and the bank deposits of the nation. No individual should suffer a loss of money through depreciation or inflated currency of Bank bankruptcy.
Government, possessing the power to create and issue currency and credit as money and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as a means of financing government work and public enterprises.
The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
By adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts, and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government.
Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power.
We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.
The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine.
All that harms labor is treason to America.
I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to.
An allusion has been made to the Homestead Law. I think it worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.
I am busily engaged in the study of the Bible. I believe it is God’s word because it finds me where I am.
Don’t be fooled. I kept all my workout clothes in that top hat.
I believe the Bible is the best gift God ever gave to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through that book.” On a personal spiritual note, Lincoln confessed, “I have been driven many times to my knees with the overwhelming conviction, that I had nowhere else to go.
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.
Military necessity does not admit of cruelty – that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.
I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.
Politics, as a trade, finds most and leaves nearly all dishonest.
I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from – so must it be with a government.
The man who stands by and says nothing, when the peril of his government is discussed, can not be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of “Liberty to all” the principle that clears the path for all-gives hope to all-and, by consequence, enterprize [sic], and industry to all.
I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that “it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”
It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public….
Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought
Anybody will do for you, but not for me.
Everyone likes a good quote – don’t forget to share.
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas …
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.
Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.
Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults.
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature-oppositi on to it is in his love of justice.
Character is like a tree, and reputation is like its shadow.
I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.
In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business-no variety-it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.
Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.
I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.
We better know there is a fire whence we see much smoke rising than we could know it by one or two witnesses swearing to it. The witnesses may commit perjury, but the smoke cannot.
We must settle this question now – whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.
When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.
Never change horses in midstream.
Tangible language, which often tells more falsehoods than truths.
I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League, have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.
Ready are we all to cry out and ascribe motives when our toes are pinched.
It is easiest to “be all things to all men,” but it is not honest. Self-respect must be sacrificed every hour in the day.
I have always wanted to deal with everyone I meet candidly and honestly. If I have made any assertion not warranted by facts, and it is pointed out to me, I will withdraw it cheerfully.
The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle.
No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.
The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded.
I can only say that I have acted upon my best convictions, without selfishness or malice, and that by the help of God I shall continue to do so.
There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!
Glory to God in the highest, Ohio has saved the Nation.
Bring me Longstreet’s head on a platter and the war will be over
I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.
I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.
The time has come when I am for everybody fighting the rebels. Let Indians fight them; let the Negroes fight them; and if you have got any strong-legged jackasses in Iwoa that can kick rebels to death, they have my hearty consent.
Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?
I am in favor of a national bank…in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.
I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.
My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.
Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.
A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started … the fate of humanity is in his hands.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy
Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men
Four score and seven days is too long between massages
One’s only security in life comes from doing something uncommonly well.
We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.
The leading rule for a man of every calling is diligence; never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
…Anxiety beclouds the future…
People are just as happy as they choose to be.
The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Human-nature will not change.
He who sees cruelty and does nothing about it is himself cruel.
Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man’s heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.
Too many piglets not enough tits.
Kindness is the only service that will stand the storm of life and not wash out. It will wear well and will be remembered long after the prism of politeness or the complexion of courtesy has faded away.
Nothing is more damaging to you than to do something that you believe is wrong.
The problem with quotes on the internet is it is hard to verify their authenticity
You Can’t Believe Most of the Quotes You Read On the Internet
If we know where we are and something about how we got there, we might see where we are trending – and if the outcomes which lie naturally in our course are unacceptable, to make timely change.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionall y decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time.
Prosperity is the fruit of labor. It begins with saving money.
Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision.
Every man is born an original, but sadly, most men die copies.
Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms.
I have had so many evidences of [God’s] direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above.
Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief – resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.
You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry
We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, look for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?
The Almighty has His own purposes.
Care for him who shall have borne the battle
Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity – Posterity has done nothing for us
As long as the Almighty permitted intelligent men, created in his image and likeness, to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on approvingly, it’s not for me to deprive the chickens of the same privilege.
As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man.
The problem with a politician’s quote on Facebook is you don’t know whether or not they really said it.
Whatever ??u are, b? ? good one.
Why don’t I drink from a straw? Because straws are for suckers.
I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man.
I am an optimist because I don’t see the point in being anything else.
Friendship is the start for what you call love.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
The thing about quotes on the internet is that you can’t confirm their validity.
The difficult thing with quotes on the internet is verifying them
The strength of a nation lies in the homes of its people.
The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust.
All men are created equal, except Negroes.
I soon began to dream. … I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. … I left my bed and wandered downstairs. … There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers, ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’
While I have often said that all men out to be free, yet I would allow those colored persons to be slaves who want to be; and next to them those white persons who argue in favor of making other people slaves. I am in favor of giving an opportunity to such white men to try it on for themselves.
Destroy your enemy by making him your friend.
If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal,’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.
Don’t pray that God’s on our side, pray that we’re on his side.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.
The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.
We should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.
Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south – let all Americans – let all lovers of liberty everywhere – join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.
…I do not mean to say that this general government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with the duty of preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.
It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty, for yourselves, and not for me. I desire they shall be constitutionally preserved.
…I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.
So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation.
The struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.
Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand.
Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause.
May the Almighty grant that the cause of truth, justice, and humanity, shall in no wise suffer at my hands.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, our last best hope of Earth.
To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.
Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.
I think that God means that we shall do more than we have yet done in furtherance of his plans and he will open the way for our doing it.
I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.
The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.
I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.
Next to creating a life the finest thing a man can do is save one.
The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and [Zachary] Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure.
Kindness is the only service that will stand the storm of life and not wash out.
Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will.
The land-grant university system is being built on behalf of the people, who have invested in these public universities their hopes, their support, and their confidence.
All things desirable to men are contained in the Bible.
One should never believe everything one reads on the internet.
Rules of living Don’t worry, eat three square meals a day,say your prayers, be courteous to your creditors, keep your digestion good,steer clear of biliousness,exercise, go slow and go easy. May be there are other things that your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these, i reckon, will give you a good life.
I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.
Washington’s is the mightiest name of earth – long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.
Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do or not do any particular thing, He finds a way of letting me know it
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
A man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.
A lawyer’s time and advice are his(her) stock in trade.
If i get 8 hours to cut a tree i’ll spend 7 hours to sharp my knife.
If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.
My policy is to have no policy.
Cortissoz was art critic of the New York Herald Tribune.
If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.
It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.
Never let your correspondence fall behind.
Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains, its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.
That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.
Liquor may have its defenders, but it has no defense.
I always remember the prayers of my mother as they always forever.
To say a sheep has 5 legs doesn’t make it so.
We seek not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow those who would prevert it.
Young man, if God gives me four years more to rule this country, I believe it will become what it ought to be-what its Divine Author intended it to be-no longer one vast plantation for breeding human beings for the purpose of lust and bondage. But it will become a new Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the nations of the earth will assemble together under one flag, worshipping a common God, and they will celebrate the resurrection of human freedom.
Wise statesmen … established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began….
No man has a right to judge Andrew Johnson in any respect who has not suffered as much and done as much as he for the Nation’s sake.
When I lay down the reins of this administration, I want to have one friend left. And that friend is myself.
And upon this act [Emancipation Proclamation]…I invoke…the gracious favor of Almighty God.
If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that “all men are created equal,’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.
I believe the declaration that “all men are created equal” is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
Towering genius…thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freeman.
Do I not damage my enemies after i make them my close friends?
The damnest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the infinite mercy of Providence… also the damnest fool.
The best time to stop a fight is before it starts. The best vitamin for developing friends is B1. The best way to destroy an enemy in to make him a friend.
I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for that of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.
The best way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends.
Towering genius distains a beaten path.
If I am killed, I can die by once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.
We cannot but believe that He who made the world still governs it.
You know you’ve reached middle age when all you exercise is caution
When met with a problem I always ask myself what is the right thing to do and then I do it.
I am a moderate walker, however I never stroll back.
Your rights end where my nose begins.
In my entire life I have only met four “perfect” people… and I disliked them all.
A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started … He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations … The fate of humanity is in his hands.
I do not doubt that our country will finally come through safe and undivided. But do not misunderstand me… I do not rely on the patriotism of our people… the bravery and devotion of the boys in blue… (or) the loyalty and skill of our generals… But the God of our fathers, Who raised up this country to be the refuge and asylum of the oppressed and downtrodden of all nations, will not let it perish now. I may not live to see it… I do not expect to see it, but God will bring us through safe.
If it were not for my firm belief in an overruling Providence, it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such complications of affairs, to keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that the Almighty has His plans, and will work them out; and, whether we see it or not, they will be the best for us.
Cling to liberty and right; battle fro them; leed for them; die for them, if need be; and have confidence in God.
Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one…or a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God.
You can never trust the authenticity of quotes on the internet these days.
In all that people can do for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
When I go hear a man speak, I like to hear him speak like he’s fighting a swarm of bees.
When you have got a ticket to send, and you’re not a top costumer, it’s best not to waste your time.
You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you cant fool all of the people all the time.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.
Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Committee: A group which succeeds in getting something done only when it consists of three members, one of whom happens to be sick and another absent.
A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
I will learn, the opportunity will come.
Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first…The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured…
By all means, don’t say, “if I can,” say “I will.”
Labor is superior to capital and precedes capital. Without labor, there is no capital.
If you have never failed you have never lived.
If you understand what you’re doing, you’re not learning anything.
Let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.
A man has not the time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.
The legalized liquor business is the tragedy of our civilization. Alcohol is the greatest and most blighting curse of our modern civilization. The liquor seller is simply and only a privileged malefactor – a criminal.
To lead, you must touch men’s hearts.
Let all Americans – let all lovers of liberty everywhere – join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
It doesn’t mater if you’re a slow walker, so long as you don’t walk backwards.
Everybody likes compliment.
If we believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that, in the old days, God and his angels came to humans in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams.
Weakness is what keeps driving us to God, by the overwhelming conviction that there just isn’t anywhere else to go.
It’s time for me to go. But I would rather stay.
Do you think we choose the times into which we are born? Or do we fit the times we are born into?
Shall we stop this bleeding?
I am the president of the United States of America, clothed in immense power! You will procure me those votes!
Never stir up litigation, a worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this, who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket?
The blessing always comes back to the door of the author.
May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit towards those who have? And now, let me close by asking three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers and seamen, and their gallant and skillful commanders.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
In law it is a good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.
Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougeism as this?
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
I am a patient man – always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance. Still I must save this government if possible.
I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book.
It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church – bless all the churches – and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.
I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
Wherever slavery is, it has been first introduced without law. The oldest laws we find concerning it, are not laws introducing it; but regulating it, as an already existing thing.
I insist, that if there is ANY THING which it is the duty of the WHOLE PEOPLE to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties, and institutions.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Under the Dred Scott decision, squatter sovereignty squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding – like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand – helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday – that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly and expressly affirmed in it.
If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is the destruction of property-property acquired by descent or by purchase, the same as any other property.
Certainly it is not so easy to pay something as it is to pay nothing, but it is easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And it is easier to pay any sum when we are able than it is to pay it before we are able.
In times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.
Labor is like any other commodity in the market-increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.
Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.
Soldiers – You are about to return to your homes and your friends, after having, as I learn, performed in camp a comparatively short term of duty in this great contest. I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.
When you return to your homes rise up to the height of a generation of men worthy of a free Government, and we will carry out the great work we have commenced. I return to you my sincere thanks, soldiers, for the honor you have done me this afternoon.
I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country.
Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag. Soldiers, I bid you God-speed to your homes.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser than he was yesterday.
Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
I do the very best I know how-the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
We know nothing of what will happen in the future, but in the analogy of experience.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
What is conservatism? It is not adherence to the old and tried, but against the new and untried?
Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall in to this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents… pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter.
All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.
It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying; and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me.
The ant, who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest, will furiously defend the fruit of his labor, against whatever robber assails him. So plain, that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly know that he is wronged. So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.
No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle-the sheet anchor of American republicanism.
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
They have seen in his [Senator Stephen A. Douglas’s] round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands…. Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.
I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.
Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogueism as this.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.
I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.
Whether the owners of this species of property [slavery] do really see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they do, they see it as it is through 2,000,000,000 of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating.
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever-it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
If, by the mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution-certainly would, if such right were a vital one.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time.
On the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?
I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and part of States, are, and henceforward shall be free;… And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
The signs look better. The Father of Waters [the Mississippi River] again goes unvexed to the sea.
I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens… to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.
By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing…. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.
Fondly do we hope-fervently do we pray- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.
[On how he felt after losing the senatorial contest to Douglas:] I feel just like the boy who stubbed his toe-too damned badly hurt to laugh and too damned proud to cry!
Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.
That [man] can compress the most words in the fewest ideas of any man I ever knew.
[Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe:] So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!
You have heard the story, haven’t you, about the man who was tarred and feathered and was carried out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked him how he liked it. His reply was that if it was not for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.
If General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it.
He [Lincoln] used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, ‘Five,’ to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg.
Mr. Lincoln [told] the story of the young man who had an aged father and mother owning considerable property. The young man being an only son and believing that the old people had lived out their usefullness assassinated them both. He was accused, tried, and convicted of the murder. When the judge came to pass sentence upon him and called upon him to give any reason he might have why the sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he with great promptness replied he hoped the court would be lenient upon him because he was a poor orphan.
Can you inform me, gentlemen, where General Grant procures his whisky?… Because if I can find out, I’ll send a barrel of it to every General in the field!
The sun,’ said Mr. Bull, ‘never sets on English dominion. Do you understand how that is?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the Indian, ‘that is because God is afraid to trust them in the dark.
A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.
With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.
If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free of their authority. Our strife pertains to ourselves – to the passing generations of men – and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.
Here’s an object more of dread Than aught the grave contains – A human form with reason fled, While wretched life remains.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.
It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon.
He will have to learn, I know, that all people are not just- that all men and women are not true. Teach him that for every scoundrel there is a hero that for every enemy there is a friend. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest people to lick.
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met.
He who molds the public sentiment… makes statues and decisions possible or impossible to make.
I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule.
All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and force a new one that suits them better.
Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die. You need this medicine as much a I do.
Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it on his love of justice.
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.
Wanting to work is so rare a want that it should be encouraged.
A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.
In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.
Let the people know the truth and the country will be safe.
Only events and not a man’s exertions in his own behalf, can make a President.
You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.
My father taught me to work, but he did not teach me to love it.
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side, My great concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
When I am getting ready to reason with a man I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say, and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.
I can see how a man can look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan.
I care not much for a man’s religion who’s dog or cat are not the better for it.
What has once happened, will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way.
I have been driven to my knees many times because there was no place else to go.
A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
In all that people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seems to be plenty of kittens.
Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.
I laugh because I must not cry. That is all. That is all.
I can’t spare this man; he fights.
If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln.
Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.
Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live the best life that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and part from him when he goes wrong.
Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Important principles may and must be flexible.
If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in the courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and loss of self control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses in mid-stream.
No law is stronger than is the public sentiment where it is to be enforced.
Resolve to be honest at all events: and if in your judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation.
Military glory – the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.
I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I wish to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my ax.
Let us renew our trust in god, and go forward without fear.
Great men are ordinary men with extra ordinary determination.
There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.
I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.
You can’t help the poor by being one of them.
History is not history unless it is the truth.
We cannot escape history.
Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.
No man is poor who has a Godly mother.
Through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.
My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh – anything but work.
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
I am not concerned that you have fallen – I am concerned that you arise.
Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes… A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, “And this too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.
Force is all conquering, but it’s victories are short lived.
Nothing will divert me from my purpose.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
A tendancy to melancholy…let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.
I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.
Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.
Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction … nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
But for this book we could not know right from wrong.
Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)
Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.
Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Everybody likes a compliment.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
That we we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.
The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
Public opinion in this country is everything.
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg.
Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time.’
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
Some day I shall be President.
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.
The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.
If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.
Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
Here in my heart, my happiness, my house. Here inside the lighted window is my love, my hope, my life. Peace is my companion on the pathway winding to the threshold. Inside this portal dwells new strength in the security, serenity, and radiance of those I love above life itself. Here two will build new dreams-dreams that tomorrow will come true. The world over, these are the thoughts at eventide when footsteps turn ever homeward. In the haven of the hearthside is rest and peace and comfort.
The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.
I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.
I am nothing, truth is everything.
Achievement has no color
All I have learned, I learned from books.
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement.
The worst thing you can do for anyone you care about is anything that they can do on their own.
I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander
no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite
When you make it to the top, turn and reach down for the person behind you.
Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
I would rather be assassinated than see a single star removed from the American flag.
It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.
I could not sleep when I got on the hunt for an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck with me.
My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.
Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.
All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.
I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.
If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.
As we keep or break the Sabbath Day we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.
All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.
May our children and our children’s children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.
Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father’s.
He who does something at the head of one Regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.
If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
Teach economy. That is one of the first and highest virtues. It begins with saving money.
This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.
As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.
As a general rule, I abstain from reading reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.
Offering thanks in the midst of tragedy is an American tradition, . even during a bloody Civil War.
Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.
Singular indeed the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint.
I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.
A statesman is he who thinks in the future generations, and a politician is he who thinks in the upcoming elections.
One is a majority if he is right.
Suspicions which may be unjust need not be stated.
Well, I suppose you know that men will stand a good deal when they are flattered.
You are as happy as you make up your mind to be.
…Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in and inferior position…Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.
Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other right.
If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.
I have a congenital aversion to failure.
The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.
I believe I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.
Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana, they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
Received as I am by the members of a legislature the majority of whom do not agree with me in political sentiments, I trust that I may have their assistance in piloting the ship of state through this voyage, surrounded by perils as it is; for if it should suffer wreck now, there will be no pilot ever needed for another voyage.
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
There is something so ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule.
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.
Negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.
Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.
I am a patient man-always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do, but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.
If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions, not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly, alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mouths only and no hands, and if he had ever made another class that he intended should do all the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths and with all hands.
I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances would be reasonably good. But I know, and acknowledge, that you have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a candidate, yourself. If, however, you are not, then I should like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.
Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so: we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.
We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.
When you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.
We hope all danger may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be extremely dangerous.
You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.
The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.
Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business-no variety-it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.
And you are entirely free from head-ache? That is good – good – considering it is the first spring you have been free from it since we were acquainted. I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young, as to be wanting to marry again.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.
The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.
Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.
The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.
It is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute political power.
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
