Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Quotes

• 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 But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.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.