Motivational Quotes

Upon the subjects of which I have treated,

I have spoken as I have thought.

I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but,

holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be

right than at all times to be wrong,

so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous,

I shall be ready to renounce them.

Why was the amendment,

expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery,

voted down?

Plainly enough now,

the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche

for the Dred Scott decision.

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 have always hated slavery, I think,

as much as any abolitionist.

I have been an Old Line Whig.

I have always hated it,

but I have always been quiet about it until

this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent

upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil

and in the proportionable amount of the same

which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.

You may think it was a very little thing,

and in these days it seems to me like a trifle,

but it was a most important incident in my life.

I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy,

had earned a dollar in less than a day;

that by honest work, I had earned a dollar.

I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to

make anything out of my early life.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to

keep a young man down; and they will succeed,

too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from

its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task

remaining before us, that from these honored dead

we take increased devotion to that cause for

which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it

and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief

that it is in course of ultimate extinction,

or its advocates will push it forward,

till it shall become alike lawful in all the States old as well as new

North as well as South.

I can express all my views on the slavery question

by quotations from Henry Clay.

To give victory to the right,

not bloody bullets,

but peaceful ballots only,

are necessary.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska,

or other new territories,

is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there.

The whole nation is interested that the best

use shall be made of these territories.

We want them for the homes of free white people.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated.

It is the lawyer's avenue to the public.

However able and faithful he may be in other respects,

people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

We can succeed only by concert.

It is not,

'Can any of us imagine better,' but,

'Can we all do better?'

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.

Among the friends of Union,

there is great diversity of sentiment

and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

Nothing new here,

except my marrying,

which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

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.

I understand a ship to be made for the carrying

and preservation of the cargo,

and so long as the ship can be saved, with the cargo,

it should never be abandoned.

This Union likewise should never be abandoned unless

it fails and the possibility of its preservation shall cease to exist,

without throwing passengers and cargo overboard.