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Quotes by Abraham Lincoln


If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
– Abraham Lincoln

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

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

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
– Abraham Lincoln
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.
– Abraham Lincoln
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
– Abraham Lincoln
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
– Abraham Lincoln
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
– Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
– 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
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
– Abraham Lincoln
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
– Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
– Abraham Lincoln
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
– Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
– 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
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
– Abraham Lincoln
Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
– 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
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
– Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
– Abraham Lincoln
Everybody likes a compliment.
– Abraham Lincoln
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
– Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
– Abraham Lincoln
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
– Abraham Lincoln
He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine.
– Abraham Lincoln
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas better than any man I ever met.
– Abraham Lincoln
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
– Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
– Abraham Lincoln
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
– Abraham Lincoln
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
– Abraham Lincoln
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
– Abraham Lincoln
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
– Abraham Lincoln
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
– Abraham Lincoln
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
– Abraham Lincoln
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
– Abraham Lincoln
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
– Abraham Lincoln
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
– Abraham Lincoln
I must run the machine as I find it.
– Abraham Lincoln
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
– Abraham Lincoln
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. 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 true views.
– Abraham Lincoln
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
– Abraham Lincoln
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
– Abraham Lincoln
If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.
– 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
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
– 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
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
– Abraham Lincoln
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. It is the same spirit that says, You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.
– Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
– Abraham Lincoln
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
– Abraham Lincoln
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
– 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
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
– Abraham Lincoln
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
– Abraham Lincoln
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
– Abraham Lincoln
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
– Abraham Lincoln
Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
– Abraham Lincoln
Public opinion in this country is everything.
– Abraham Lincoln
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
– Abraham Lincoln
Some day I shall be President.
– Abraham Lincoln
Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.
– Abraham Lincoln
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
– Abraham Lincoln
The assertion that all men are created equal was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
– Abraham Lincoln
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
– Abraham Lincoln
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
– Abraham Lincoln
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
– Abraham Lincoln
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
– Abraham Lincoln
The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
– Abraham Lincoln
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
– Abraham Lincoln
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
– Abraham Lincoln
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
– Abraham Lincoln
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
– 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
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
– Abraham Lincoln
There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, Truth is the daughter of Time.
– Abraham Lincoln
There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one.
– Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.
– Abraham Lincoln
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
– Abraham Lincoln
To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.
– Abraham Lincoln
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
– Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
– 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 may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance.
– Abraham Lincoln
We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.
– Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
– Abraham Lincoln
What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
– Abraham Lincoln
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
– 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
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
– Abraham Lincoln
With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.
– Abraham Lincoln
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.
– 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
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
– Abraham Lincoln
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
– Abraham Lincoln
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
– Abraham Lincoln
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
– Abraham Lincoln
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
– Abraham Lincoln
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excercise their constitutional right of amending it, or excercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
– Abraham Lincoln
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
– Abraham Lincoln
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
– Abraham Lincoln