Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Liquor may have its defenders, but it has no defense.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

A lawyer's time and advice are his(her) stock in trade.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

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

I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.

The only security a man can ever have is the ability to do a job uncommonly well.

Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.

We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, look for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?

Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.

But fight we must; and conquer we shall; in the end.

Achievement has no color

You have confidence in yourself, which is valuable, if not an indispensable quality.

I am not an accomplished lawyer.

Believing everybody is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.

I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground.

Everybody likes a compliment.

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.

If you trust, you will be disappointed occasionally, but if you mistrust, you will be miserable all the time.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone. Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

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

Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy.

Without Divine assistance I can not succeed; with it I can not fail.

Why don't I drink from a straw? Because straws are for suckers.

We must ask where we are and whither we are tending.

Too big to cry too young to laugh.

I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, our last best hope of Earth.

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

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

Towering genius...thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freeman.

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

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

President Lincoln was once criticized for his attitude toward his enemies. "Why do you try to make friends of them?" asked an associate. "You should try to destroy them." "Am I not destroying my enemies," Lincoln gently replied, "when I make them my friends?"

Why don't you laugh? If I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.

I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.

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.

Money possesses no value to the state other than that given to it by circulation.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.

Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.

It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty, for yourselves, and not for me. I desire they shall be constitutionally preserved.