Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Some persons assume that the success of our arms in crushing the opposition which was made in some of the States to the execution of the Federal laws reduced those States and all their people -the innocent as well as the guilty- to the condition of vassalage and gave us a power over them which the Constitution does not bestow or define or limit. No fallacy can be more transparent than this. Our victories subjected the insurgents to legal obedience, not to the yoke of an arbitrary despotism.

National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government.

The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.

If 'extreme' means that I am unwilling to go to Washington, D.C., and do what President Obama tells me, then so be it. But I am certainly not going to Washington, D.C. to represent the interests of D.C. I'm going there to represent Colorado values.

The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the constitutions and laws of sovereign states, overthrow their domestic relations, deprive loyal men of their property, and disloyal as well, without trial or condemnation.

I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty.

I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it.

They can't do it. They can't compel me to do it. It is as important for the cause that Lincoln should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field.

These colonies are, and of right ought to be, individual states.

Under the Constitution, the Militia must ever be estimated the bulwark of civil and individual liberty. Directed by public sentiment, it will guard us from the oppression of power; regulated by wisdom, and patronized by the Government, it will secure us from anarchy; officered, trained and supported by the States, it is the guarantee of their sovereignty and union; and properly armed and disciplined, ... it forms an impenetrable barrier to the invader.

The question, ‘Who are the People of the United States?’ was never directly dealt with by the Constitutional Convention. On the contrary, that most important of all issues concerning Freedom was referred to the several states, to be dealt with by each of them in their own particular manner

The late rebel States have lost their constitutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of representation in Congress, except by permission of the Government. It matters but little, with this admission, whether you call them States out of the Union, and now conquered territories, or assert that because the Constitution forbids them to do what they did do, that they are therefore only dead as to all national and political action, and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former position.

The proper limits of Government interference are relative to the nature of each particular state and the stage of its civilization.

No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union;

The Fugitive Slave Act does not affect a foreign country which Virginia claims to be.

Many states have legalized medicinal marijuana. I believe the president and the Department of Justice ought to respect the will of these separate states... We are capable of self-government. We don't need some federal gendarme to come and tell us what to do. I believe comity toward the states...ought to govern the policy.

All the existing governments of the world are there for the avowed purpose of safeguarding the sovereign rights of the nations they rule or serve, and there is no one of them that could make surrender of these without being immediately hurled from power by the political forces behind it.

Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

Arkansas needs leaders who will stand up to anyone in Washington, from either political party, and do what's right for Arkansas and for our country.

I think that when you look at our founding principles, it was based on America as a nation committed to universal human rights and a nation that was weary of foreign entanglements and foreign alliances that did not keep us safe or promote our interests.

If you are not able to provide security for your own country, how can you guarantee liberties?

The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

My father would always say Kashmiris have made so much sacrifice to achieve something more, but we have a constitution, special status and a flag, and our foremost duty is to protect what we have.

The American Revolution was carried out in the name of the people, and it was supposedly 'We, the people,' who created the government that Americans still live under.