If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others

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

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

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.

I do not boast that God is on my side, I humbly pray that I am on God's side.

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

He who does something at the head of one Regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.