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

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn't know anything.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.

No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression.

People are just as happy as they choose to be.