Best Quotes Around the World

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

A place for everything, everything in its place.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

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.

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

When I’m up there, and I know the show’s coming to a close, in my head I’m saying to myself, Oh man, you gotta get off and be a normal person again. That’s what I don’t like so much.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

When in doubt, don’t.

If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.

I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Many readers fail to realize this, but ‚The Color Purple‘ is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one’s original God: the earth and nature.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

On a spiritual level, it’s as though with my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. It’s illuminated life more than darkened it.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.

I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.