Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

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

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.

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

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

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

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

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.

Never regret what you don’t write.

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.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Everybody likes a compliment.

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

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.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

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.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

I am rather inclined to silence.

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.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

I understand a ship to be made for the carrying and preservation of the cargo, and so long as the ship can be saved, with the cargo, it should never be abandoned. This Union likewise should never be abandoned unless it fails and the possibility of its preservation shall cease to exist, without throwing passengers and cargo overboard.

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.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

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

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.

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.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.

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

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

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

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.

Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it.

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.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

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