Abraham Lincoln

I have been selected to fill an important office, and I am to be inaugurated on the 4th of March, and I am going to try to do the best I can.

He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

Allow the President to invade a State, whenever he shall deem the laws of that State to have been violated, and what would be the result? He might go into Utah, and dismember her from the Union, and then into New York, and do the same.

The strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of one like our own, is the attachment of the people.

Public opinion, though often an errant master, is, at last, the true sovereign.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such right were a vital one.

The principle of 'popular sovereignty' is a dangerous humbug.

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. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They did not mean to set up a standard of equality in all these respects. They did mean to declare all men equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I have been driven many times to 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 that day.

Property is the fruit of labor—property is desirable—is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is a just encouragement to industry and enterprise. 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.

I hold that the government was made for the people, and not the people for the government.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

The Union must be preserved.

I consider the central idea of the Republic as the equality of all men.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

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.