Quotes

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.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

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.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Everybody likes a compliment.

Never regret what you don't write.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.