From Honest Abe...

Some Quotes from a US President who was truly a Statesman, not a politician.... The one leading off with "No gentlemen" seems to have been especialy aimed at GW Bush, considering his party purports to be "the party of Lincoln." They both have the same name, those parties of disparate ages and ideals, but without the labels, considering only their actions, I see little reason or right to mention them in the same breath.

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures…”

“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

“ No gentlemen; I have not asked for the nomination, and will not now buy it with pledges. If I am nominated and elected, I shall not go into the Presidency as the tool for this man or that man, or as the property of any factor or clique.”

“It has been said of the world’s history that might makes right. It is for us and our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might.”

The Gettysburg AddressGettysburg, PennsylvaniaNovember 19, 1863

On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

—Abraham Lincoln