_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Never regret what you don't write.
Some day I shall be President.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
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.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
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.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
Everybody likes a compliment.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
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.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
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.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
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.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
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 have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
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.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
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.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
Public opinion in this country is everything.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
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.
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.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
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.
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.
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
I am rather inclined to silence.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.
The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.
I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.
True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.
Don't swap horses in crossing a stream.
Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.
I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.
I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.
I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.
If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.
If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.
The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
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.
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.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
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 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.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
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.
In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.
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.
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.
That we 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.
I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.
For my part, I desire to see the time when education - and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry - shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.
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.
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
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.
My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all.
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.
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.
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 by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
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.
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Never regret what you don't write.
Some day I shall be President.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
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.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
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.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
Everybody likes a compliment.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
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.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
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.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
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.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
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 have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
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.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
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.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
Public opinion in this country is everything.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
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.
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.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
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.
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.
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
I am rather inclined to silence.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.
The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.
I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.
True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.
A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.
Don't swap horses in crossing a stream.
Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.
I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.
I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.
I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.
If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.
If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.
The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
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.
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.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
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 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.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
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.
In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.
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.
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.
That we 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.
I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.
For my part, I desire to see the time when education - and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry - shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.
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.
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
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.
My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all.
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.
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.
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 by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
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.
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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