Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

“As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”

“Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

“I can make more generals, but horses cost money.”

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

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

“There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.”

“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.”

“I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.”

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

“Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”

“It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

“A house divided cannot stand.”