Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.

Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State?

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.

A land without memories is a people without liberty.

Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans.

I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.

I believe it to be the duty of everyone to unite in the restoration of the country and the reestablishment of peace and harmony.

The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.

In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.

God is forgiving or we would not still be walking this world. But to be moral is not to need his divine forgiveness, I think.

[Snobbishness] is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

I'm not at the place in my career necessarily where I'm like offered every role.

On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable.

Real champions fight through adversity.

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.

The big ballpark can do it all!

He remembers the five rules of combat set down by Chuan Tzu - faith, companions, time, space and strategy.

Assumptions are usually presumptuous but often correct.