Top 1245 Quotes & Sayings by Abraham Lincoln - Page 2

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 purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

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.

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.

I am rather inclined to silence.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.

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

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.

I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

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.

My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all.

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Everybody likes a compliment.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

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 may be on the Lord's side.

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles - the oppression of tyranny - to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

Never regret what you don't write.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

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.

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.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it.

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

Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises - repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism.

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.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

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

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.