• Let’s have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
• Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
• I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
• I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
• If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
• Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
• I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.
• Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. First Lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions" (April 6, 1858)
• If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
• That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
• Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
• Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough." Notes for a Law Lecture" (July 1, 1850?) No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
• No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
• Condolences: "I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom." Letter to Mrs. Lydia Bixby (November 21, 1864)
• There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.
• I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
• If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
• Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
• He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
• Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
• When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
• You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
• A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
• Men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.
• My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
• No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.
• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
• 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.
• Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties
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