Abraham Lincoln Quotes (426 Quotes)

In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread' and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour. And inasmuch as most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

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.

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own, intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

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.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Has it popular sovereignty not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.

Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me and I think He has I believe I am ready. This comment was made in a private conversation with Newton Bateman, superintendent of public instruction for the state of Illinois, a few days before the election of 1860. During the election of 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy used the same words in a speech to the United Steelworkers of America convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 19, 1960. Freedom of Communications, final report of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, part 1, p. 286 (1961). Senate Report. 87-994. As president, he used a variation of these words at the 10th annual presidential prayer breakfast, March 1, 1962. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States John F Kennedy, 1962, p. 176.

Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

a new birth of freedom.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.

In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights

We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience.

I laugh because I must not cry.

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

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends.

Some day I shall be President.

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

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have Four, calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict slavery might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered that of neither has

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.

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

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.

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

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.