“The man who will not investigate both sides of a question is dishonest.”
“After all, the one meaning of life is simply to be kind.”
“I have not done much, but this I have done—wherever I have found a thistle growing, I have tried to pluck it up, and in its place to plant a flower.”
“I have been too familiar with disappointment, to be very much chagrined by defeat.”
“Without the assistance of that Divine Being I cannot succeed, and with that assistance I cannot fail.”
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”
“Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday may labor on his own account today, and hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement and improvement in conditions is the order of things in a society of equals,—in a democracy.”
In a speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859, he said, “I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty. I think a definition of genuine popular sovereignty, in the abstract, would be about this: That each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him. Applied to government this principle would be, that a general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern them. I understand that this government of the United States, under which we live, is based upon that principle; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have any war to make upon that principle.”