Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn't know anything.

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book.

The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point.

We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.

You are young, and I am older;
You are hopeful, I am not-
Enjoy life, ere it grow colder-
Pluck the roses ere they rot.

I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to bevery much chagrined.

You can't help the poor by being one of them.

Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.

Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.

You can not fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed.

A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.

The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was not made to conceal or destroy the apple, but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture.

The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

Your rights end where my nose begins.

By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be
all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

I now leave, not knowing when or whether I may return, to a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

God bless the soldiers and seamen, with all their brave commanders.

No man has a right to judge Andrew Johnson in any respect who has not suffered as much and done as much as he for the Nation's sake.

The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so, for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it, we have before us,
the chief material enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

If 600,000 people have to die in order for the nation to live, then 600,000 people will die.

The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God's green earth.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must rise to the occasion.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

You can complain because a rose has thorns, or you can rejoice
Because the thorns have a rose.

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.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful.

I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.

Stand with anyone that is right; stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

Anxiety beclouds the future ...

His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by oiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.

I always [or "often"] walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty, for yourselves, and not for me. I desire they shall be constitutionally preserved.

As a general rule, I abstain from reading reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

I am a patient man
always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do, but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.

In my entire life I have only met four "perfect" people ... and I disliked them all.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances would be reasonably good. But I know, and acknowledge, that you have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a candidate, yourself. If, however, you are not, then I should like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.

If I had my way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my way this war would have been ended before this.

You cannot fail unless you quit.

Let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.

Senator [Stephen] Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.

My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I ... fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.

This nation under God

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.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

I understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.

My policy is to have no policy.

If I have one vice and I can call it nothing else it is not able to say 'no'.

I have never united myself to any church because I found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize the articles of belief and the usual confession of faith.

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

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.

Don't worry when you are not recognized but strive to be worthy of recognition

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman's skillet and the man's ax-helve.

Gratefully accepting the proffered honor, [to inscribe a new legal work to him] I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.

To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards of men.

We shall not fail - if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

There is something so ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule.

If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.

There is no greater injustice than to wring your profits from the sweat of another man's brow.

I do not mean to say that this general government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with the duty of preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy.

I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration of Independence] intended to include all men.

I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down but I bite my lip and keep quiet.

Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.

Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education - and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry - shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.

This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.

Here is Abraham Lincoln's touching condolence letter to 22-year-old Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a long-time friend:

"Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln

There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.

Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.