"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people."

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

"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."

"Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?"

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

"Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."

"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."

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."

"Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."

"In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who have entered college more easily."

"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."

"Without the assistance of the Divine Being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail."

"All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind."

"I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise."

"Four score 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."

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

"A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones."

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

"With high hope for the future no prediction is ventured."

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time."

"I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down."

"Democracy is the government of the people by the people for the people."

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."

"Were it not for my little jokes I could not bear the burdens of this office."

"With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase."

"That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures, and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular."

"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."

"The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also."

"The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them."

"No man is poor who has a Godly mother."

"I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every friend on earth I shall have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside me."

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

"Your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing."

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

"Seriously I do not think I am fit for the presidency."

"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."

"I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but holding it a sound maxim, that it is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them."

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

"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."

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

"Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?"

"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."

"Every man over forty is responsible for his face."

"Two principles have stood face-to-face from the beginning of time, and they will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."

"When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."

"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."