Abraham Lincoln quotes

Born
February 12, 1809 Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.

Died
April 15, 1865.

Occupation
President, Lawyer, Politician.

Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
– Abraham Lincoln

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
– Abraham Lincoln

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
– Abraham Lincoln

I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.
– Abraham Lincoln

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
– Abraham Lincoln

 Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
– Abraham Lincoln

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.
– Abraham Lincoln

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
– Abraham Lincoln

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
– Abraham Lincoln

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time.’
– Abraham Lincoln

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
– Abraham Lincoln

Whatever you are, be a good one.
– Abraham Lincoln

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
– Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
– Abraham Lincoln

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.
– Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
– Abraham Lincoln

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.
– Abraham Lincoln

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.
– Abraham Lincoln

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?
– Abraham Lincoln

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

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

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
– Abraham Lincoln

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
– Abraham Lincoln

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.
– Abraham Lincoln

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.
– Abraham Lincoln

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
– Abraham Lincoln

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
– Abraham Lincoln

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
– Abraham Lincoln

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.
– Abraham Lincoln

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.
– Abraham Lincoln

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
– Abraham Lincoln

A house divided against itself cannot stand.
– Abraham Lincoln

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
– Abraham Lincoln

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
– Abraham Lincoln

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
– Abraham Lincoln

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
– Abraham Lincoln

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.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
– Abraham Lincoln

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
– Abraham Lincoln

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
– Abraham Lincoln

Everybody likes a compliment.
– Abraham Lincoln

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
– Abraham Lincoln

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
– Abraham Lincoln

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
– Abraham Lincoln

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.
– Abraham Lincoln

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
– Abraham Lincoln

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
– Abraham Lincoln

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
– Abraham Lincoln

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
– Abraham Lincoln

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
– Abraham Lincoln

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
– Abraham Lincoln

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
– Abraham Lincoln

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
– Abraham Lincoln

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
– Abraham Lincoln

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
– Abraham Lincoln

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

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

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
– Abraham Lincoln

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.
– Abraham Lincoln

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

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

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
– Abraham Lincoln

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
– Abraham Lincoln

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
– Abraham Lincoln

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.
– Abraham Lincoln

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
– Abraham Lincoln

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
– Abraham Lincoln

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
– Abraham Lincoln

Some day I shall be President.
– Abraham Lincoln

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
– Abraham Lincoln

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
– Abraham Lincoln

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
– Abraham Lincoln

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
– Abraham Lincoln

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
– Abraham Lincoln

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
– Abraham Lincoln

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.
– Abraham Lincoln

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
– Abraham Lincoln

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.
– Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

Never regret what you don’t write.
– Abraham Lincoln

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.
– Abraham Lincoln

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
– Abraham Lincoln

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.
– Abraham Lincoln

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
– Abraham Lincoln