The working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous.

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

I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end.

I am an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us.

A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.