Abraham Lincoln Quotes

The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.

The strength of a nation lies in the homes of its people.

As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.

confused and Stunned, like a duck hit on the head.

Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.

Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

You can't help the poor by being one of them.

You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps, I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid.

Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail... A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand.

I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

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

The only assurance of our nation's safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.

In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it.

I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

If we exchange one dollar, we both have one dollar each. But if we exchange one good thought, we both have two good thoughts

To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.

Labor is superior to capital and precedes capital. Without labor, there is no capital.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.

I never did ask more, nor ever was willing to accept less, than for all the States, and the people thereof, to take and hold their places, and their rights, in the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. For this alone have I felt authorized to struggle; and I seek neither more nor less now.

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

The greatest lessons I have every learned were at my mother's knees... All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?

If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.

Relying, as I do, upon the Almighty Power, and encouraged as I am by these resolutions which you have just read, with the support which I receive from Christian men, I shall not hesitate to use all the means at my control to secure the termination of this rebellion, and will hope for success.

I believe the Bible is the best gift God ever gave to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through that book." On a personal spiritual note, Lincoln confessed, "I have been driven many times to my knees with the overwhelming conviction, that I had nowhere else to go.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

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

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

...I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.'

We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.

Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.

The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.

I turn, then, and look to the American people and to that God who has never forsaken them.

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.