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.

Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.

The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.

Politics, as a trade, finds most and leaves nearly all dishonest.

I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views.