Abraham Lincoln

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am a little afraid to go to sleep, for fear of not waking up.

We are not enemies, but friends. 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 battle-field, 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.

He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall be no longer a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that any one is too wise to learn.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people?

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects.

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 their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.

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.

It is a struggle, an arduous struggle, to make a man a slave; but it is a more arduous struggle to make a slave a man.

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.

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

We are not enemies, but friends. 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 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.

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

I desire to see the time when education, and not the color of the skin, shall be the criterion of citizenship.

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. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

I have no other than a religious feeling in regard to the institution of slavery.

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book.

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