"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee"
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business"
"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say"
"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure"
"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance"
"When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run"
"Knavery and flattery are blood relations"
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues"
"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years"
"In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong"
"I will prepare and some day my chance will come"
"I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known"
"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow"
"There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, "Truth is the daughter of Time.""
"The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him"
"The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed"
"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read"
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other"
"Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure"
"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother"
"All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind"
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today"
"You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence"
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle"
"With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die"
"With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed"
"With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds"
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally"
"To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary"
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves"
"The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use"
"That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well"
"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves"
"Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality"
"Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong"
"Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything"
"Some day I shall be President"
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves"
"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him"
"I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause"
"A house divided against itself cannot stand"
"A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have"
"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be"
"Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible"
"He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make"
"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help"
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth"
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe"
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal"
