Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.

One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way--will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.

Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.

Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.

“Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organization and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action converts adversity into prosperity.”

“The best brains of a nation may be found at the last benches of the classroom.”

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!” 

“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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.” 

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” 

“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.” 

“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.” 

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” 

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to 

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” 

“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.” 

“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.” 

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” 

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.” 

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” 

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” 

“I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: that most of us weren’t interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time; that if we preferred to keep to ourselves it was mainly because that was the easiest way to stop thinking about it, easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.”