Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Quotes

• 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.