Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed had not labor first existed.
Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.
Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generations of men-and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.
Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.
We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
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.
My friends I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.
We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.
I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.
I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.
If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.
May our children and our children’s children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.
Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father’s.
He who does something at the head of one Regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.
If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
Teach economy. That is one of the first and highest virtues. It begins with saving money.
As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.
Offering thanks in the midst of tragedy is an American tradition,. even during a bloody Civil War.