If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.

What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.

I have always believed that a good laugh was good for both the mental and physical digestion.

Care for him who shall have borne the battle

It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.