Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.

~ Abraham Lincoln

It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us.

~ Abraham Lincoln

As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

~ Abraham Lincoln

If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on

~ Abraham Lincoln

Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

~ 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, and beer.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.

~ Abraham Lincoln

A farce or comedy is best played, a tragedy is best read at home.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

~ Abraham Lincoln

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,[Abraham Lincoln]April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. PierceSpringfield, Ill.

~ 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

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. &“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people”– –

~ Abraham Lincoln

Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung

~ Abraham Lincoln

I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but holding it a sound maxim, that it is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

Two principles have stood face-to-face from the beginning of time, and they will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The more sects we have the better. They are all getting somebody in (to the Church) that the others could not: and even with the numerous divisions we are all doing tolerably well.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I'm a slow walker but I never walk back.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is but it does not admit of holidays.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be new views.

~ Abraham Lincoln

He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help.

~ 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

I don't know who my grandfather was I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.

~ Abraham Lincoln

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

~ Abraham Lincoln