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I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
Abraham Lincoln
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 may be on the Lord's side.
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
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.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
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 has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better', but, 'Can we all do better?'
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'
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.
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.
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 don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.
The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.
I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.
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 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.
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.
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.
'A living dog is better than a dead lion.' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it.
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
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.
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 a slow walker, but I never walk back.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced 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.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?
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.
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.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
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.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
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.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.
Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.
Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
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