Category: Quote of the Day

The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes.”– Letter to Joshua Speed, August 24,1855

The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.”– Speech on the Sub-Treasury in the Illinois House of Representatives, December 26, 1839

The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful.”– Fragment on Free Labor, circa September 17, 1859

The people’s will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all.”– Response to Serenade, October 19, 1864

The people will save their government, if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well.”– Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861

The people – the people – are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.”– Speech in Kansas, December 1859

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, 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.”– Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

The inclination to exchange thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature.”– Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, February 11, 1859

The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am. None who would do more to preserve it.”– Address to the New Jersey General Assembly, February 21, 1861

The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats.”– Letter to H. Asbury, November 19, 1858