| 1 | Whatever you are, be a good one. |
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| 2 | The ballot is stronger than the bullet. |
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| 3 | Avoid popularity if you would have peace. |
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| 4 | I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back. |
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| 5 | Knavery and flattery are blood relations. |
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| 6 | I walk slowly, but I never walk backward. |
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| 7 | Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. |
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| 8 | A house divided against itself cannot stand. |
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| 9 | Public opinion in this country is everything. |
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| 10 | I regard no man as poor who has a godly mother. |
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| 11 | I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards. |
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| 12 | I can make more generals, but horses cost money. |
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| 13 | I will prepare and some day my chance will come. |
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| 14 | Important principles may and must be inflexible. |
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| 15 | If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? |
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| 16 | I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends. |
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| 17 | With the catching end the pleasures of the chase. |
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| 18 | Suspicions which may be unjust need not be stated. |
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| 19 | To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own. |
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| 20 | What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself. |
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| 21 | I fear explanations explanatory of things explained. |
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| 22 | He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. |
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| 23 | I don't like that man. I must get to know him better. |
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| 24 | Let the people know the truth and the country is safe. |
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| 25 | All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. |
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| 26 | Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. |
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| 27 | Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old. |
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| 28 | No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. |
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| 29 | He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help. |
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| 30 | The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. |
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| 31 | He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. |
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| 32 | The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. |
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| 33 | Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. |
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| 34 | Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? |
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| 35 | People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be. |
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| 36 | Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets. |
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| 37 | Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory. |
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| 38 | I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come. |
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| 39 | Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves. |
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| 40 | Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. |
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| 41 | Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. |
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| 42 | The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. |
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| 43 | Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. |
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| 44 | To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. |
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| 45 | Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be. |
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| 46 | The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. |
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| 47 | Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. |
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| 48 | The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. |
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| 49 | Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible. |
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| 50 | You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. |
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| 51 | Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. |
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| 52 | I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. |
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| 53 | If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will. |
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| 54 | You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was. |
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| 55 | Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people |
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| 56 | If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend. |
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| 57 | Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement. |
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| 58 | No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. |
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| 59 | No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. |
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| 60 | With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. |
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| 61 | I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. |
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| 62 | If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe. |
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| 63 | For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. |
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| 64 | When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. |
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| 65 | The Lord prefers common-looking people.That is why He made so many of them. |
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| 66 | It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. |
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| 67 | He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. |
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| 68 | It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. |
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| 69 | Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. |
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| 70 | People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. |
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| 71 | I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day. |
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| 72 | I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number. |
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| 73 | I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave
and half free. |
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| 74 | Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet. |
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| 75 | We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience. |
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| 76 | I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. |
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| 77 | Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle. |
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| 78 | Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. |
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| 79 | Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet. |
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| 80 | 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. |
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| 81 | If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe. |
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| 82 | If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance. |
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| 83 | In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. |
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| 84 | That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well. |
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| 85 | Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. |
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| 86 | Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. |
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| 87 | The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed. |
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| 88 | We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot. |
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| 89 | And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. |
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| 90 | If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. |
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| 91 | Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. |
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| 92 | Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. |
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| 93 | The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason that He makes so many of them. |
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| 94 | And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. |
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| 95 | I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. |
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| 96 | Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. |
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| 97 | As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. |
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| 98 | ...Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. |
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| 99 | Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing. |
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| 100 | If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. |
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| 101 | Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. |
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| 102 | My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. |
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| 103 | You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. |
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| 104 | Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victories. |
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| 105 | What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? |
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| 106 | I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. |
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| 107 | The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person. |
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| 108 | What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? |
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| 109 | He who molds the public sentiment ... makes statues and decisions possible or impossible to make. |
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| 110 | I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. |
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| 111 | It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. |
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| 112 | Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them. |
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| 113 | I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. |
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| 114 | 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. |
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| 115 | The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. |
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| 116 | There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, "Truth is the daughter of Time." |
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| 117 | Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. |
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| 118 | When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run. |
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| 119 | 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. |
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| 120 | Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. |
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| 121 | My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth. |
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| 122 | If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. |
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| 123 | Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence? |
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| 124 | 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. |
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| 125 | Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. |
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| 126 | There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending. |
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| 127 | Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents ... pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. |
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| 128 | Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. |
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| 129 | With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right. |
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| 130 | All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. |
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| 131 | We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read. |
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| 132 | In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the
free,--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. |
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| 133 | 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. |
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| 134 | Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. |
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| 135 | If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf. |
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| 136 | Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence? |
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| 137 | 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. |
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| 138 | 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. |
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| 139 | 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. |
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| 140 | Die when I may, I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a flower where ever I thought a flower would grow. |
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| 141 | Dont interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. |
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| 142 | You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time. |
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| 143 | It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him. |
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| 144 | 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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| 145 | 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. |
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| 146 | Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. |
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| 147 | There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one. |
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| 148 | True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. |
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| 149 | America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. |
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| 150 | 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. |
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| 151 | Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon. |
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| 152 | I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule. |
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| 153 | You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. |
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| 154 | You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time. |
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| 155 | The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. |
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| 156 | 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. |
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| 157 | Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling. |
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| 158 | 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. |
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| 159 | 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 should be on the Lords side. |
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| 160 | You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. |
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| 161 | All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. |
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| 162 | 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. |
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| 163 | 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. |
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| 164 | 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. |
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| 165 | As long as men are free to ask what they must; free to say what they think; free to think what they will; freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. |
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| 166 | I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me. |
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| 167 | Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and force a new one that suits them better. |
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| 168 | Sorrow comes to all...Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better and yet you are sure to be happy again. |
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| 169 | I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day. |
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| 170 | 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. |
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| 171 | 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. |
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| 172 | With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves. |
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| 173 | My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh - anything but work. |
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| 174 | The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. |
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| 175 | 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. |
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| 176 | 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. |
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| 177 | You can have anything you want - if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose. |
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| 178 | 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. |
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| 179 | The law isnt justice. Its a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. |
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| 180 | 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. |
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| 181 | 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. |
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| 182 | 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. |
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| 183 | 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. |
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| 184 | 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 of me. |
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| 185 | 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. |
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| 186 | This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excercise their constitutional right of amending it, or excercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. |
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| 187 | 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. |
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| 188 | Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people...until wealth is aggregated in a few hands...and the Republic is destroyed. |
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| 189 | The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 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. |
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| 190 | 'A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal.' 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 which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason. |
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| 191 | Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy; but, my friend, these I reckon will give you a good life. |
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| 192 | If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. |
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| 193 | With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. |
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| 194 | 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 may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance. |
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| 195 | Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. |
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| 196 | It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! |
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| 197 | Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in and inferior position...Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. |
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| 198 | Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing: 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. |
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| 199 | We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 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. |
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| 200 | 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. |
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| 201 | I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. |
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| 202 | No foreign power or combination of foreign powers could by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up from among 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 of suicide. |
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| 203 | This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birthday of
Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the
mightiest name on earth--long since mightiest in the cause of
civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that
name an eulogy is expected. It can not be. To add brightness to
the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible.
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name and in its
naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on. |
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| 204 | 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. |
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