Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody’s business to pursue and direct it incessantly.

The two systems slave and free-labor are incompatible. They have never permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.

A party with one idea; but that is a noble idea ... the idea of equality - the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws.

The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness.

Revolutions never go backward.

Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.

It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.

The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.

I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.