Abraham Lincoln Quotes (426 Quotes)

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

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.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people Is there any better or equal hope in the world.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

After a man reaches forty, he is responsible for his face.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

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 Bonaparte 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.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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.

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

Every man over forty is responsible for his face.

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

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

Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it on his love of justice.

I think very much of the people, as an old friend said he thought of woman. He said when he lost his first wife, who had been a great help to him in his business, he thought he was ruined that he could never find another to fill her place. At length, however, he married another, who he found did quite as well as the first, and that his opinion now was that any woman would do well who was well done by. So I think of the whole people of this nation they will ever do well if well done by. We will try to do well by them in all parts of the country, North and South, with entire confidence that all will be well with all of us.

Bush also defended the Mission Accomplished ... People make a big deal out of it. It was not a mistake to go to the carrier. And there was certainly no intention to say that this was over quite the contrary. If people had listened to what I said, I said there is more hard work to do. And there is hard work to do.

Let the people know the truth and the country will be safe.

I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.

... peace is a thing which a person must be willing to fight for ...

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

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

Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland, April 18, 1864 We all declare for liberty but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names liberty and tyranny.

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

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.

Military glory -- the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs.

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.

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it. . .

The President tonight has a dream He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said 'He is a very common-looking man.' The President replied 'The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.'

Yet, if God wills that (this war) continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword,

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, can not long retain it.

I know something about aircraft carriers. And I can't wait to tell this country that landing on an aircraft carrier doesn't make up for the lack of an economic plan or a security plan for the United States of America.

To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise high with the occasion

Sorrow comes to all...Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better and yet you are sure to be happy again.

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.

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

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln did not hesitate to dispel the notion that he was a champion of racial equality 'I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.'

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.

If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, ... the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

The mystic cords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone throughout the land