Abraham Lincoln

"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.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

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

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

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.

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.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

Everybody likes a compliment.

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

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.

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.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine.

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas better than any man I ever met.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

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.

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.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

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.

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

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

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

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.

I must run the machine as I find it.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.

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.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

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.

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.

If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

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.

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.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

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.

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.

Public opinion in this country is everything.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Some day I shall be President.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

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.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

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.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

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.

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.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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.

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.

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.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, "Truth is the daughter of Time."

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.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

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.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

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.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

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.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

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.

You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.

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.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.