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.
Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
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.
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.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
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.
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
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.
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
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.
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.
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.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
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.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.
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.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
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.
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
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.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
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 do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
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.
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.
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. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
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.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
