This site was awarded a Times Pick by the Los
Angeles Times on 2/12/97.
"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."
"If the good people, in their wisdom, shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea
of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is
no democracy."
( From "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln." )
"Die when I may, I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a
flower wherever I thought a flower would grow."
"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentance, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all
times and situations. They presented him 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!"
( Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. )
"No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this
parting. to this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything.
Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an
old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not
knowing when or if 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.
Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for
good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well."
( Farewell Address, Springfield, Illinois )
"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end,
when I come to lay down the reigns 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."
( Reply to Missouri Committee of Seventy )
"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 bourne 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."
( Second Inaugural Address )
"I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves,
it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who
desire it for othres. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a
strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
( Address to an Indiana Regiment )
"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to
control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that
are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles
upon which our government was founded."
( December 1840 )
"Important principles may and must be inflexible."
( Last public address, Washington, D.C. )
"It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God."
"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God's side."
"The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
This site was awarded a Times Pick by the Los
Angeles Times on 2/12/97.