A Lincoln Quotes

...with malice towards none and charity for all... ~ A. Lincoln

Mummy, I woke today and there was a Lincoln Log in me sock drawer! ... That's the story of Jesus. ~ Bill Hicks

It [Lincoln movie] had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with holding a mirror up to the way we conduct our business on Capitol Hill. This was meant to be a story, a Lincoln portrait if you will. I think any time is the right time for a very compelling story, any time. ~ Steven Spielberg

One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln. ~ Christopher Moore

...with towards none and charity for all... ~ A. Lincoln

After his failed political career, Lincoln often pondered the question of the purpose of the meaning of life. In 1850 [ten years before he was elected President], Lincoln told Herdon [his law partner] How hard, oh how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived. ~ Ronald C. White Jr.

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 ~ Abraham Lincoln

The Feynman Dilemma
A diner says to a waiter, "What's this fly doing in my soup?" And the waiter says, "It looks like the backstroke." Yet if the same scene is viewed while plunging into a black hole at the speed of light, it will look like a Mickey Mouse lunch pail from the thirties, except that Mickey's head has been replaced by a Lincoln penny ~ Steve Martin

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. ~ Gerald R. Ford

I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking. ~ Gerald R. Ford

A bunch of money-grubbin', greenhouse-gasing, seal-clubbing, oil-drilling, Bible-thumping, missile-firing, right-to-life-ing, lethal-injecting hypocrites. People whose idea of a good time is strapping a dead panda to a Lincoln Navigator and running over everybody in the gay parade. ~ Richard Jeni

This is humor: A Japanese woman experiences discomfort in her eye, so she goes to see a qualified ophthalmologist. After a thorough examination, the doctor tells the Japanese woman that she has a cataract. She says, 'No, I don't. I have a Lincoln Continental. ~ Lee Goldberg

What are the stars telling you?" I asked.
Max pushed up on his elbows and pretended to strain his ear toward the sky. "They say...They say...you're allowed to forgive yourself."
I rolled sideways...and he did the same.
"For what?" I asked.
"Living."
"I'm not very good at that," I admitted.
"Well, you kissed someone without flinching. Maybe you're getting better."
"Maybe it's just you."
He didn't argue. ~ Courtney C. Stevens

My heart has been heavy and I have deliberated within my own conscience, knowing that my decision should not come out of my initial emotion of anger toward the President for such reckless behavior, but should be based on the facts. ~ Blanche Lincoln

It is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute political power. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I like to think that I've got determination, and I'm fiercely protective of the people I love. ~ Andrew Lincoln

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. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. ~ Barack Obama

My policy is to have no policy. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~ Abraham Lincoln

FALSE EQUIVALENCY

If you compare the Koch brothers to George Soros and you compare MSNBC to FOX News then why not compare the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan, George Washington to King George, Abraham Lincoln to Jefferson Davis, Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin;
If you compare the Democratic party to the Republican party then why not compare Citizens United with Brown versus Board of Education, Churchill to Mussolini, Martin Luther King to George Wallace;
If you compare Liberals to Conservatives then why not compare Boxing to Cage Fighting, Mozart to Salieri, Edward Kennedy Ellington to Lawrence Welk, Three Card Monty to Inside Trading, John Birks Gillespie to Cab Callaway;
If you are mentally slothful enough to engage in false equivalency, why not go all the way? Pretend that ignorance equates with knowledge, Science with Mythology and empathy with apathy? ~ E. Landon Hobgood

Your particular trip isn't done just yet. Remember that true enlightenment is never finished. Ever. Understanding is never complete. ~ EXO Books

I felt bad for lying to John, who was about as honest as Abe Lincoln on sodium Pentothal. ~ Mark Adams

It is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me."
"That you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me."
"Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death - the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem? ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

One of my top priorities in Congress is to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. ~ Lincoln Diaz-Balart

The best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived, even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has not yet been discovered. ~ Lincoln Steffens

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Adversity does not make us frail; it only shows us how frail we are. ~ Abraham Lincoln

But fight we must; and conquer we shall; in the end. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose. ~ Jonathan Raban

Dearest friend, do you not see All that we perceive Only reflects and shadows forth What our eyes cannot see. Dearest friend, do you not hear In the clamor of everyday life Only the unstrung echoing fall of Jubilant harmonies. Vladimir Soloviev, Russian Gnostic and philosopher, 1892 ~ J. Lincoln Fenn

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS ~ Abraham Lincoln

The letter is too belligerent. If I were you, I would state the facts as they were, without the pepper and salt. Abraham Lincoln ~ Harold Holzer

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

When you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance. ~ Abraham Lincoln

To see Kyle, to wave to him, like getting off at the 79th street station, near where Kyle lives, instead of going all the way to the Lincoln Center station near school, so I can grab coffee and watch him walk by before I, too, walk on to Tuttle, about fifty feet behind him. ~ Alex Flinn

Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed. They always have been, they always will be beaten. ~ Abraham Lincoln

If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true [cure] is in the next election, and not in the treachery of the person elected. ~ Abraham Lincoln

God gave us Lincoln and Liberty, let us fight for both. ~ Ulysses S. Grant