Abraham Lincoln Quotes

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

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

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity?

To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, ["] and to preach there-from that, "In the sweat of other mans faces shalt thou eat bread," to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity.

My God! My God! What will the country say?

You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently.

The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle.

We trust, sir, that God is on our side. It is more important to know that we are on God's side.

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself ... are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.

Committee: A group which succeeds in getting something done only when it consists of three members, one of whom happens to be sick and another absent.

I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself.

History is not history unless it is the truth.

Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.

Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.

I am not a very sentimental man; and the best sentiment I can think of is, that if you collect the signatures of all persons who are no less distinguished than I, you will have a very undistinguishing mass of names.

Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men

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

Nothing in this world is impossible to a willing heart.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.

So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!

If the American people could learn what I know of the fierce hatred of the priests of Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights, and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them out as traitors.

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.

No State, upon it own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally nothing. I therefore consider that the Union is unbroken. There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless forced upon the national authority.

I cannot imagine anyone looking at the sky and denying God.

When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all, and it comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible, except with the passing of time.

To lead, you must touch men's hearts.

We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.

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

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

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."

Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.

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

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were felt by the whole human race, there would not be one cheerful face left on earth.

You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.

If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us.

The good old maxims of the Bible are applicable, and truly applicable to human affairs, and in this as in other things, we may say here that he who is not for us is against us; he would gathereth not with us scattereth.

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.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

No man has a right to judge Andrew Johnson in any respect who has not suffered as much and done as much as he for the Nation's sake.

I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for allcommanders.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.