The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s 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.
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
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.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Some day I shall be President.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
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.
Whatever you are, be a good one.