Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.
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 he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism.
