Abraham Lincoln

“I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.”

“Adversity does not make us frail; it only shows us how frail we are.”

“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.”

“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

“Your organization will take on the personality of its top leaders”

“The point - the power to hurt - of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.”

“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.”

“My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education.”

“What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?”

“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.”

“Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.”

“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].”

“Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought”

“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.”

“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.”

“You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently.”

“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.”

“But for that Book, we could not know right from wrong.”

“We should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.”

“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!”

“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. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

“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.”

“War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.”

“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.”

“If you have never failed you have never lived.”

“The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must rise to the occasion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Work, work, work, is the main thing.”

“You know you've reached middle age when all you exercise is caution”

“I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.”

“We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better,' but, 'Can we all do better?'”

“It must now atone in blood for its complicity in wickedness.”

“I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.”

“There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'”

“Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.”

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

“Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.”

“Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”