Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

As we keep or break the Sabbath Day we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

If you trust, you will be disappointed occasionally, but if you mistrust, you will be miserable all the time.

I told myself, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means." So I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what "demonstrate" means, and went back to my law studies.

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy... Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors... You have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Bad promises are better broken than kept.