Abraham Lincoln: Quotations



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Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to himBlondin, stand up a little straighterBlondin, stoop a little morego a little fasterlean a little more to the northlean a little more to the south? No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Dont badger them. Keep silence, and well get you safe across.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow fromso must it be with a government.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth 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.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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I do the very best I know howthe very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me wont amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

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The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

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

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

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

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

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I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.

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

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The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

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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. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live the best life that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and part from him when he goes wrong.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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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.

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If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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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!

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

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Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

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Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.

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All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

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Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

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

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

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Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.

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With high hope for the future, no prediction is ventured.

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

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But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.

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

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.

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If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how -- the very best I can. And I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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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 labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

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Whenever [I] hear any one, arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Senator [Stephen] Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, landoffices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.

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When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you willwhether it comes from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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

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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?

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I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.

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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.

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

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A house divided against itself cannot stand -- I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

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How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

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I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.

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

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I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our Nation. I believe it practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced. Immigration, which even the war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundred of thousands more per year from overcrowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that waits for them in the West. Tell the miners from me, that I shall promote their interests to the utmost of my ability; because their prosperity is the prosperity of the Nation, and we shall prove in a very few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Singular indeed that the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselvesin their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere. The desirable things which the individuals of a people can not do, or can not well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those which have relation to wrongs, and those which have not. Each of these branch off into an infinite variety of subdivisions. The firstthat in relation to wrongsembraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and nonperformance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself. From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need for government.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

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The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

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Whatever you are, be a good one.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other mans rightsthat each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of no other State, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole.

x Author:: Abraham Lincoln

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