To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
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.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?
To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
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.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
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.
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 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.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
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.
