The press has no better friend than I am, no one who is more ready to acknowledge . . . its tremendous power for both good and evil.

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent.

There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one.

We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the territories, where our votes will reach it.