Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.
Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
'A living dog is better than a dead lion.' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it.
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.
I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.
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 have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.
The point - the power to hurt - of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.
Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.
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.
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.
The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.