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our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make

Surely it is hardly fitting that the ruler should be baser than the ruled.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.

His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.

The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result.

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

Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.

In administering the laws of Congress I shall keep steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of the Executive power trusting thereby to discharge the functions of my office without transcending its authority.

The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised, under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region are greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man.

Nay, ’tis woman’s strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.

A race cannot be purified from without.

Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”

our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

The progress of society rests upon the increasing collectivity of human labor.

The Constitution defines the functions and powers of the executive as clearly as those of either of the other two departments of the Government, and he must answer for the just exercise of the discretion it permits and the performance of the duties it imposes.

It decrees that we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.

Our answer is this: a denial of constitutionally protected rights demands judicial protection; our oath and our office require no less of us.

Our attempts to banish this importunate duty will only make it return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape more unpleasant than the former.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms

Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people.