Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
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.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.
Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
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.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.
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. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.
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 disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.
Some day I shall be President.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.
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.
I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.
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.
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
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.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
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.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.
Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false… In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‘Can any of us imagine better,’ but, ‘Can we all do better?’
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
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.
I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
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, can be engaged in.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.
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.
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
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 swap horses in crossing a stream.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.
I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.
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.
Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.
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.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
The mystic cords 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 angels of our nature.
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
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.
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