Quote collection
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"I can not but hate the prospect of slavery's expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity."
"Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public."
"I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union."
"I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me."
"By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be -- all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all."
"I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to."
"Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction."
"You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it."
"Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there."
"I know the hole he went in at, but I can't tell you what hole he will come out of."
"Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing."
"If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others"
"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females."
"Suspicions which may be unjust need not be stated."
"In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; asbad and good."
"If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage."
"Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good."
"Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object"
"With the Catching Ends the Pleasure of the Chase."
"As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."