Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, on his “do-gooder” religion:
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

Abraham Lincoln, on the importance of transparency in government:

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

Abraham Lincoln, on the proper relation of God and humans:

We trust, sir, that God is on our side. It is more important to know that we are on God's side.

Abraham Lincoln, reminding us that Rome was not built in a day, nor the business of America finished by the adoption of the Constitution:

"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."

Abraham Lincoln, proposing a common sense test for true religion:

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

Abraham Lincoln, on the proper attitude regarding compromise of basic principles:

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

the question of extending the slavery under the national auspices, --I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.

Abraham Lincoln, on the nature of conservatism:

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

Abraham Lincoln, on the primary source of his political ideas:

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

Abraham Lincoln, explaining that the genius of the Declaration of Independence was not something to be accomplished in a single generation:

It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland; but something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people