Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Work & Career (9 Quotes)

This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions

My father taught me to work, but he did not teach me to love it.

Wanting to work is so rare a want that it should be encouraged.

Resolve to be honest at all events and if in your judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation.

It is better then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor maintain it keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it for as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now now when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

If you intend to work, there is no better place than right where you are if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling from place to place can do no good.

Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.

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.