Quotes Of Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

"You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm."

"If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."


"If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."
 
"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." (Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838)


"You can not fail if you resolutely determine that you will not." (Letter to George Latham, July 22, 1862)



"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
 
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. "

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live the best life that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and part from him when he goes wrong.

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

Abraham Lincoln

"A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have. "

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other"

•Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809.


•Lincoln was the first president born outside the original 13 states.

•When Lincoln was seven, his family moved to Indiana and cleared land for a new farm.

•In 1818, when Lincoln was nine, his mother, Nancy Hanks, died. His father remarried.

•Lincoln received sporadic education as a child, walking two miles to a schoolhouse when he was not needed to work on the family farm.

•Despite a lack of formal schooling, Lincoln read widely, often borrowing books

1820s: Rail-Splitter and Boatman


Library of Congress•By the age of 17 Lincoln had grown to his adult height of six feet, four inches.

•Lincoln was known locally for his strength and his prowess for splitting timber for fence rails.

•Lincoln developed a skill for storytelling.

•In 1828 Lincoln and a friend worked taking a boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It was Lincoln's first sight of the world beyond the frontier communities of his youth.

•On the 1828 boat trip, Lincoln and his friend Allen Gentry fought off a gang of slaves that tried to rob them.

•In New Orleans the 19-year-old Lincoln was said to have been offended by the sight of large slave markets.
1830s: Abraham Lincoln as a Young Man


Library of Congress•In 1830 Lincoln, who was 21, moved with his family to the town of New Salem, Illinois.

•In 1832 Lincoln briefly served in the Black Hawk War. This would be his only military experience.

•In Illinois, Lincoln tried a variety of occupations, including storekeeper.

•A young woman Lincoln knew, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835, and stories persist that he was thrown into a deep depression over it. Historians still debate the relationship between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge.

•Continuing to educate himself, he read law books and in 1836 he was admitted to the bar.

•In 1837 he moved to Springfield, Illinois to take up a law practice.

•Lincoln served in the Illinois legislature from 1834-1841, as a member of the Whig Party.
 
The election of Lincoln as President in 1861, sparked the South to succeed from the North. Southern independence sentiment had been growing for many years and the election of a president opposed to slavery was the final straw. However, Lincoln resolutely opposed the breakaway of the South and so this led to the American civil war. The civil war was much more costly than many people anticipated and at times Lincoln appeared to be losing the support of the general population. But, he managed to keep the Republican party together, stifflying dissent by promoting the various Republican factions into the cabinet. Lincoln oversaw many of the military aspects of the war and promoted the general Ullysees S Grant to oversee the northern forces.




Although the war was primarily about succession and the survival of the Union, Lincoln also issued his memorable Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.



Eventually after 4 years of attrition the Federal forces secured the surrender of the defeated south. Lincoln had saved the union and also brought to head the end of slavery.



Dedicating the ceremony at Gettysburg Lincoln declared



"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."





Lincoln was tragically assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, an actor on, April 14, 1865. He is widely regarded as one of America’s most influential and important presidents. As well as saving the union Lincoln was viewed as embodying the ideals of honesty and integrity.

Socrates Story

But when Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What is wisdom?" and "What is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?" He knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it would be better to have a lot of people discuss the answers together, so that they might come up with more ideas. So he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, "What is wisdom?" , "What is piety?", and so forth. Sometimes the people just said they were busy, but sometimes they would try to answer him. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better by asking them more questions which showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even tried to beat him up.




This is what is left of the Painted Stoa, or Porch, where Socrates used to teach, in Athens.



Socrates soon had a group of young men who listened to him and learned from him how to think. Plato was one of these young men. Socrates never charged them any money. But in 399 BC, some of the Athenians got mad at Socrates for what he was teaching the young men. They charged him in court with impiety (not respecting the gods) and corrupting the youth (teaching young men bad things). People thought he was against democracy, and he probably was - he thought the smartest people should make the decisions for everyone. The Athenians couldn't charge him with being against democracy, because they had promised not to take revenge on anyone after the Peloponnesian War. So they had to use these vague religious charges instead.



Socrates had a big trial in front of an Athenian jury. He was convicted of these charges and sentenced to death, and he died soon afterwards, when the guards gave him a cup of hemlock (a poisonous plant) to drink.



Socrates never wrote down any of his ideas while he was alive. But after he died, his student, Plato, did write down some of what Socrates had said. You can read Plato's version of what Socrates said online, or you can buy copies of these conversations as a book (it's only like US $5.00).

Socrates

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

Socrates

During the golden age of freedom and education in Athens, many teachers traveled around Greece educating the young. One of the most famous of these teachers was a man named Socrates.

Many of the teachers of his day taught that a man should consider the consequences of his actions before making a decision. Socrates taught that the consequences did not matter. What was most important was that you always did what was right. He believed that if something was right, it did not matter what would happen to you, you should do it.




Socrates also taught his students to think for themselves. He created a teaching method known today as the Socratic Method, which helped students think clearly, and question their currently accepted way of thinking.



Socrates was eventually accused of corrupting the young. After being convicted by a jury he was sentenced to death.

Bill Gates

www.billgatesmicrosoft.com/fans.htm

 

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

"I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act. "

# William Henry Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, USA.

# His father William was a corporate lawyer, and his mother Mary was a schoolteacher.

# By the age of 17, Gates had sold his first computer program, a time-tabling system for his high school, for $4,200.

# Gates scored 1590 on his SAT standardized test. The top score for the test is 1600.

# Gates told his university teachers he would be a millionaire by age 30. He became a billionaire at age 31.

# While at Harvard, Gates co-wrote Altair BASIC, which became Microsoft’s (then called Micro-Soft) first product.

# He met his wife, Melinda French, in 1987 at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan while she was a worker for the company. They would go on to get married on New Years Day in 1994.

# In 2002, Bill Gates was considered more idolized than Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung in a poll of teenagers in Hong Kong and China. The survey was conducted by the City University of Hong Kong.

# In 2005, Gates was honored with the title Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II of England.

# As of the March 2007 issue of Forbes magazine, Bill Gates has been listed as Number 1 on “Forbes’ Richest People” list for 13 years in a row. His current net worth is about $56 billion.

# Gates has recently announced that he will be reducing his involvement at Microsoft and will be devoting more time to his charity work.

# He is currently having a building named after him at Carnegie Mellon University, called the Gates Building of Computer Science.

# Gates is the current owner of the Codex Leicester — a 72-page collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific writings. The writings are a mixture of observations on water properties, astronomy, and rocks and fossils. Gates puts the Codex on public display once a year in a different city around the world.

# Bill Gates earns $250 every SECOND; that’s about $20 million a DAY and $7.8 billion a YEAR!

# If he drops a thousand-dollar bill, he needn’t even bother to pick it up because in the four seconds it would take him to pick it up, he would’ve already earned it back.

History of Rosa Parks

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.



Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."





Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone."



After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African-Americans in the segregated south.





"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."



The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.



In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.





After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.



When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."



Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92. After her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects to the woman whose courage had changed the lives of so many. She is the only woman and second African American in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

Rosa Parks

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.

"Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again."

Popularly remembered as the woman who quietly refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated bus, thereby launching the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks was already steeped in black politics long before her iconic arrest.




A secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP since 1943, she was well aware of the group’s attempts to challenge the Jim Crow laws on public transportation and supported their plans to instigate a bus boycott.



Rosa Parks reputes the common myth that her unwillingness to get up was due to aching feet. “No” she said, “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”



Although instrumental to the Civil Rights movement, Parks went on to live in anonymity after the protests, working as a seamstress for almost a decade and not receiving national recognition until later in life

History of Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929. Both his father and grandfather were Baptist preachers who had been actively involved in the civil rights movement.

King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry. While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.




After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends, Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon, and Bayard Rustin helped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued.



For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. and the boycott came to an end on 20th December, 1956.

I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.


And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” Speech

Quotes:

A lie cannot live.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Goodbye Letter to his Children


Dear Hildita, Aleidita, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto,



If you read this letter one day, it will mean that I am no longer alive. You will hardly remember me, and the smallest among you will have entirely forgotten me.



Your father was a man who acted as he thought best and who has been absolutely faithful to his convictions.

Grow up into good revolutionaries. Study hard to master technique, which gives you mastery over nature. Remember that it is the Revolution which is important and that each of us, taken in isolation, is worth nothing.

Above all be sensitive, in the deepest areas of yourselves, to any injustice committed against whoever it may be anywhere in the world.



Yours always, my children. I hope to see you again.



A big strong kiss from Daddy.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/audio.htm

Life History of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

'Che' Guevara was born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna on 14 June 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, into a relatively upper-middle class family. His father was a construction engineer. He was the first of five children. Develops a severe asthmatic condition at the age of two, prompting his family to move to the drier climate of Alta Gracia, Cordoba. Most of his early education was provided by his mother at home. He is reported to have read widely and deeply from his father's library, encountering Marx and Freud in his early teens. In 1941, he attends the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes, a secondary school in Cordoba. Enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires in 1948, studies medicine, becomes interested in leprosy. His asthma disqualifies him for military service. Makes a 4,000 mile long journey through Northern Argentina alone on a moped, encountering many indigenous tribes and experiencing first hand the impoverished conditions of their lives. In 1951, he takes off on a motorcycle journey with his good friend, Alberto Granado. They travel from Buenos Aires, down the coast of Argentina, through the Andes into Chile, and then north into Peru, Columbia and Venezuela. The diary Che kept during this time has been published as: The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America.
                                  He qualifies as a doctor in 1953, specializing in dermatology. Around this time he was exposed to the attempted worker reforms following the National Revolution of 1952 in Boliva. Walks and hitchhikes to Guatemala, witnesses the overthrow of the radical socialist government of Jacobo Arbenz by USA-supported Castillo Armas. He could not help but note the vital role that the CIA played in the counter-revolution. Establishes connections with Peruvian Apristas and other Latin American radicals. In September of 1954, he moves to Mexico City, finding work in the General Hospital. Through Hilda Gadea, a Peruvian Marxist, he meets Fidel Castro and involves himself in the planned invasion of Cuba. He marries Gadea. They have a daughter, Hildita. Under the influence of Castro, Alberto Bayo and the writings of Mao Tse-tung, he begins to form the primary axioms of his philosophy of guerrilla warfare. In this time he also began to be called 'Che', for his habit of ending his sentences and calling his friends 'Che'- which is an Argentinian expression for buddy. In 1956, the revolutionaries land in Cuba on the "yacht" Granma, initating a three-year guerrilla war against the dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Che is included at first for his medical expertise but soon rises through the ranks to become the Commandante of the Revolutionary Army of Barbutos. In this role, he is directly responsible for dozens of executions of defectors and Batista loyalists. The revolutionaries succeed in overthrowing the Batista regime in January of 1959.
                                                          Che is now considered second only to Castro, who appoints him Governor of the National Bank. Che Guevara's portrait on the Cuban 3 peso note He marries Aleida March de la Torre, with whom he eventually has four children. He is made Minister for Industry in 1961, becomes increasingly hostile towards US interests in the Cuban economy, strengthens relationship with USSR. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Che advocates nuclear confrontation. From 1961 to 1965, he travels with his wife around the world as an ambassador for Cuba. Becomes disillusioned with Soviet Communism, makes a formal break in a speech delivered in February of 1965. Calls for guerrilla-type revolutionary actions in Africa, Asia and South America. Che goes underground, traveling through Africa, eventually assembling a group of Cubans to fight in the Kinshasa rebellion in the Congo. The rebellion fails and Che withdraws in August of 1965. Castro informally removes Guevara from office, their ideas for the future of Cuba having radically diverged. He disguises himself as Uraguayan economist, shaving off his beard and not wearing his famous beret, in order to travel incognito through Latin America.
                                                  In November 1966, he leads a group of guerrillas through southeastern Bolivia, hoping to inspire the peasants and workers into a revolutionary movement that would spread all throughout Latin America, sparking off "twenty new Vietnams". Dispirited by casualties, illness and depression, the ragged group is cornered by a Bolivian battalion (which had been trained by US Special Forces in anti-guerrilla warfare) in a gorge on October 8. Two jets and a helicopter provide air support. Che is taken to the nearby town of La Higuera. He refuses all attempts at interrogation by CIA and Bolivan officials. The Bolivian president, General Rene Barrientos, orders the execution of Guevara as soon as possible. 9 October 1967.
                        After a few false starts and Che's telling them to get it over with, six or more shots are fired into Guevara's torso. One version of his reported last words were: "I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well." Others have claimed his last words to have been: "Shoot, coward! You are going to kill a man." After his death, a death mask was made and his hands were cut off to ensure identification. His body was buried in a secret grave. Guevara was 39 years old. In June of 1997, a team of Cuban and Argentinian scientists recovered the skeleton, missing both hands, of Guevara in the town of Vallegrande, Bolivia. The bones have since been "repatriated" to Cuba.

Ernesto_che_guevara

“It's a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.”

“I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”

che_guevara

"Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes."

Che Guevara




http://www.cheguevara.com/

http://www.hey-che.com/

The Library of Che Guevara


Master Pieces

Books in English (Non Fiction)

Icon, Myth and Message -David Kunzle UCLA Fowler Museum - 1998

Che: Images of a Revolutionary - Fernando D.García/Oscar Sola

A Revolutionary Life Che Guevara - Jon Lee Anderson - 1997

The African Dream - Ernesto Guevara - 1999 Travelling with Che Guevara - Alberto Granado - 2003

Che Guevara - Andrew Sinclair - 1998

Viva Che - Marianne Alexandre - Third World Series Lorrimer - 1969

Che Guevara - David Sandison - 1997

The Life and Times of Ernesto Guevara - David Sandison - 1996

Che Guevara - Daniel James - 1970

Che Guevara, Economics & Politics in the transition to Socialism - Carlos Tablada - 1987

The Fall of Che Guevara - Henry Butterfield Ryan - 1998

The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto Guevara - 1992

Pompo, A man of Che's Guerilla - Harry 'Pompo' Villegas -1997

My Friend Che - Ricardo Rojo - 1968

Che in Africa - William Galvez - 1999

Che The Making of a Legend - Martin Ebon - 1969

The Life and Death of Che Guevara - Jorge Castañeda - 1997

Guerilla Warfare A method - Che Guevara - 1966