Abraham Lincoln

Quotes

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
I do not believe the Union will disolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other.
Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.
If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it.
I'm not concerned that you have fallen,
I'm concerned that you arise.
No matter how much cats fight there always seem to be plenty of Kittens.
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.
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.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
I am not concerned that you have fallen; I am concerned that you arise.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
I do the very best I know how-the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
We know nothing of what will happen in the future, but in the analogy of experience.
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
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.
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. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.
I don't think much of a man who is not wiser than he was yesterday.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
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.
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' 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 that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.
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.
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.
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.
The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.
What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory.
Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side.
How many legs does a dog have if you count his tail as a leg? Four. You can call a tail a leg if you want to, but that doesn't make it a leg.
If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
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.
It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them.
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
...and that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
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 should be on the Lords side.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.
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.
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That�s my religion.
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I...fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 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.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
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.
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.
I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.
It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Whatever you are, be a good one.