Abraham Lincoln

Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first...The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured...

I will learn, the opportunity will come.

A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

Committee: A group which succeeds in getting something done only when it consists of three members, one of whom happens to be sick and another absent.

Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.

I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.

We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.

My friends I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.

I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I dont believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other mans rightsthat each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of no other State, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generations of men-and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.

Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed had not labor first existed.

A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.

No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression.

Talk to the jury as though your client's fate depends on every word you utter.

You can't help the poor by being one of them.

I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations...is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.

I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me

And upon this act [Emancipation Proclamation]...I invoke...the gracious favor of Almighty God.

And whereas this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.