If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
When arguing with a fool, make sure the opponent isn’t doing the exact same thing.
Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
I will do what I think is right and when I discover that it is wrong, I will change it.
Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.
Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?
I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.
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.
A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.
Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.
A statesman is one who thinks in the future generations, and a politician is one who thinks about the upcoming elections.
No man is poor who has a Godly mother.
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.
I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.