Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.
- Topic: Character, Leadership, Purpose
- Location: Hana, Hawaii, Maui
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Abraham Lincoln
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness for the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
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.
More Quotes from Hana
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Plans will get you into things, but you have got to work your way out.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
Howsoever you may repair it, a rift is a rift.
It is frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.
When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.
The heights by great men reached and kept Where not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.
I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.
When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?
Only 3 things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and under performance. Everything else requires leadership.
Thinking too well of people often allows them to be better than they otherwise would.
Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.
First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
Never cross a man, not afraid to die.
