We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.

He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.

Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.