"I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently..." - Quote by Abraham Lincoln

“My policy is to have no policy.”

“What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”

“As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

“I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”

“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 ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.”

“The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.”

“The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.”