Abraham Lincoln

"I do not believe I can do much good in any other place as I can here."

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality."

"The philosophy of one century becomes the absurdity of the next."

"Important principles may and must be inflexible."

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

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis."

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

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

"A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me."

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present."

"It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself."

"I am slow to listen to criminations against myself."

"The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land."

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

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

"Public opinion in this country is everything."

"I desire so to 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 me."

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

"Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most."

"I never boast, except when I am right."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

"My father taught me to work, but not to love it."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

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

"The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, by whatever means possible."

"I have been temperate in the pursuit of truth."

"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it."

"I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody."

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."