Abraham Lincoln

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.--as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS”

“It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.”

“no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite”

“How weak and fruitless must be any word of mine.”

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”

“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case.”

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

“The inclination to share thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature.If in pain I wish to let you know it,and ask your sympathy and assistance;and my pleasurable emotions also,I wish to communicate to,and share with you.”

“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander”

“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

“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.”

“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

“With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semicolin; it's a useful little chap”

“Може да лъжеш някои хора през цялото време или всички през повечето време,но не можеш да лъжеш всички през цялата време.”

“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.”

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

“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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that 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.”

“Anda,Tidak dapat menguatkan yang lemah dengan melemahkan yang kuatTidak dapat membantu orang-orang kecil dengan mencabik orang besarTidak dapat menolong orang miskin dengan menghancurkan orang kayaTidak dapat mengangkat penerima upah dengan menekan pembayar upahTidak dapat terhindar dari masalah dengan menghasilkan penghasilan lebih besarTidak dapat memajukan rasa persaudaraan dengan mendorong kebencian antar rasTidak dapat menciptakan keamanan di atas uang pinjamanTidak dapat membangun karakter dan semangat dengan merampas inisiatif dan kemerdekaan.”

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

“If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.”

“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”

“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once.”

“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”

“All I have learned, I learned from books.”

“Achievement has no color”

“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”

“I am nothing, truth is everything.”

“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

“Investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”

“If you think you can you can, if you think you can't you're right!”

“It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.”

“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”

“I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...”

“Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent.”

“Here in my heart, my happiness, my house.Here inside the lighted window is my love, my hope, my life.Peace is my companion on the pathway winding to the threshold.Inside this portal dwells new strength in the security, serenity, and radiance of those I love above life itself.Here two will build new dreams--dreams that tomorrow will come true.The world over, these are the thoughts at eventide when footsteps turn ever homeward.In the haven of the hearthside is rest and peace and comfort.”

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”

“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.”

“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.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that 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.”

“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”