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 up to the light I have.
If you look for the worst in people and expect to find it, you surely will.
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
I’m not telling you it is going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.
Your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
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.
You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
You can't make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak.
You can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today.
You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.
You can never fully trust the validity of quotes on the internet.
You can make any quote sound meaningful by putting a famous person's name after it.
You can lose everything in life,but not dreams.
you can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.
You can have anything you want, if you want it badly enough.
You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold that desire with singleness of purpose.
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
Writing is the great invention of the world.
Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me.
Without the assistance of that divine being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, remain with you and be everywhere for good let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
With Malice Towards None.
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.
With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semi-colon; it's a useful little chap.
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.
While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away. it's best to let him run.
When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help... When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
