Abraham Lincoln Quotes

If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.

That we 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 like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side.

You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both.

If you love something, set it free.

I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy.

Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.

The trouble with Hooker is that he's got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be.

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

Human-nature will not change.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.

Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humilation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] 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. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.

When arguing with a fool, make sure the opponent isn't doing the exact same thing.

It is a good face. I am glad this war is over at last.

The land-grant university system is being built on behalf of the people, who have invested in these public universities their hopes, their support, and their confidence.

I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.

Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises verywell, considering we never controlled him much.

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.

As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.

Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

The written word may be man's greatest invention. It allows us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.

He has got the slows, Mr. Blair.

I am nothing, truth is everything.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

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

A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money.

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.

The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

It is much easier to ride a horse in the direction it is going.