Abraham Lincoln Quotes

646 Sourced Quotes

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.

Abraham Lincoln
You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps, I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid.

Abraham Lincoln
Nor must Uncle Sam's Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broadbay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.

Abraham Lincoln
When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.

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

Abraham Lincoln
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Abraham Lincoln
We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.

Abraham Lincoln
I cannot speak so confidently about the fighting qualities of the Eastern men, or what are called Yankees - not knowing myself particularly to whom the appellation belongs - but this I do know - if the Southerners think that man for man they are better than our Illinois men, or western men generally, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake.

Abraham Lincoln
Others have been made fools of by the girls; but, this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,made a fool of myself.

Abraham Lincoln
No one has needed favours more than I, and generally, few have been less unwilling to accept them; but in this case, favour to me,would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it.

Abraham Lincoln
The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and [Zachary] Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure.

Abraham Lincoln
It is the man who does not want to express an opinion whose opinion I want.

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

Abraham Lincoln
Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause.

Abraham Lincoln
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.

Abraham Lincoln
Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one...or a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God.

Abraham Lincoln
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.

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
Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand.

Abraham Lincoln
Of our political revolution of '76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.

Abraham Lincoln
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.

Abraham Lincoln
I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never espouse their quarrels on either side. My sincere wish is that both sides will allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.

Abraham Lincoln
Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.

Abraham Lincoln
I have always wanted to deal with everyone I meet candidly and honestly. If I have made any assertion not warranted by facts, and it is pointed out to me, I will withdraw it cheerfully.

Abraham Lincoln
We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'can any of us imagine better?, but 'can we all do better?

Abraham Lincoln
Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.

Abraham Lincoln
Wise statesmen... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began....

Abraham Lincoln
Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first...The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured...

Abraham Lincoln
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?

Abraham Lincoln
The political horizon looks dark and lowering; but the people, under Providence, will set all right.

Abraham Lincoln