Politics Quotes

Let it be public, full, and fair. No cliqueism or cheatery about it.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burthens.

I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, (by no means excluding females.)

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration... can very seriously injure the government

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union ... If I could save the Union without freeing any slave... if I could save it by freeing all the slaves... I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think ... to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. ... that of being truly esteemed of my fellow‑men.

Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

Stand by your principles; stand by your guns; and victory complete and permanent is sure at the last.

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong.

If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle - I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

I have been occupying a position, since the Presidential election, of silence, of avoiding public speaking, of avoiding public writing. I have been doing so because I thought, upon full consideration, that was the proper course for me to take.

Without a name, perhaps without a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his country.

I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true cure is in the next election.