Abraham Lincoln

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

"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."

"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow."

"Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong."

"Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it."

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

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

"The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence."

"The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied."

"The mystic cords 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 angels of our nature."

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

"The point - the power to hurt - of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application."

"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 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. 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."

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."

"These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have."

"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, can be engaged in."

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

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

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

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