With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
— Abraham Lincoln
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
Some day I shall be President.
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
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.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
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.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
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.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
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.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Everybody likes a compliment.
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
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.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
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.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
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.
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.
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.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
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.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
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.
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
