Quotes

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education - and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry - shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

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

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

I understand a ship to be made for the carrying and preservation of the cargo, and so long as the ship can be saved, with the cargo, it should never be abandoned. This Union likewise should never be abandoned unless it fails and the possibility of its preservation shall cease to exist, without throwing passengers and cargo overboard.

In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.

If there should prove to be one real, living Free State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it might be well to catch him and stuff and preserve his skin as an interesting specimen of that soon-to-be-extinct variety of the genus Democrat.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.