The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.

I will unite with anyone to do good, but with no one to do harm.

You degrade us and then ask why we are degraded. You shut our mouths and ask why we don't speak. You close your colleges and seminaries against us and then ask why we don't know.

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

[John Brown's] zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun... I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave.

The ballot is the only safety.

[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.