Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

“‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’ Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care anything about it.”

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

“A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.”

“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”

“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.”

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

“Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.”

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.”

“As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”

“Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”

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

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.”

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

“Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.”

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.”

“Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.”

“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.”

“Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.”

“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.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

“He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.”

“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

“I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance.”

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.”

“I am rather inclined to silence.”

“I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.”

“I can make more generals, but horses cost money.”

“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”

“I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.”

“I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

“I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.”

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”

“I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.”

“I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.”

“I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.”

“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.”

“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”

“I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.”

“I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”

“I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.”

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

“I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.”

“If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.”

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

“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.”

“If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.”

“If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.”

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

“If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.”

“Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.”

“In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.”

“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.”

“It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.”

“It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.”

“It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

“It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.”

“Knavery and flattery are blood relations.”

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”

“Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.”

“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

“My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.”

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

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

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

“No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.”

“No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.”

“Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.”

“Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”

“Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.”

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

“Some day I shall be President.”

“Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”

“Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.”

“That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures, and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.”

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

“The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.”

“The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.”

“The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.”

“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”

“The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.”

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”

“The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.”

“There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time.’”

“There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.”

“These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”

“To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.”

“True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.”

“Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”

“When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.”

“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.”

“Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people.”

“With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

“You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.”