Abraham Lincoln

"The Union was not formed by the states; but the states were formed by the Union."

"The Constitution was not made to bind us up—but to bind us together."

"There may be some irregularity in my past."

"I have to answer the prayers of neither my friends nor my enemies."

"All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow."

"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."

"I am a slow walker, but I never walk back."

"My early history is perfectly characterized by a single line of Gray's Elegy: 'The short and simple annals of the poor.'"

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."

"I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end."

"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."

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are contented with your failure."

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business."

"I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule."

"The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, by whatever labor at whatever cost."

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

"Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

"I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."

"The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves."

"Upon the subject of education, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we may be called upon to consider."

"All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind."

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."

"Are all the laws but dead letters from this time forward, and are all the Constitutions all matters of form?"

"I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all."

"I have never been glad to see people separated; on the principle that if it were not good for them to be together, it is bad to keep them together."