A Quote by Abraham Lincoln

Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.

Abraham Lincoln

Quote Topics

Any Away Capable Gives Least Most Perish Society Takes Those Will

Quote Author

Abraham Lincoln
American - President
February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy): A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Morgan Philpot

Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.

Rebecca West

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Charles Caleb Colton

We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers, which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection.

John Locke

Oh, my brothers and sisters in Christ, if sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies; and if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay, and not madly to destroy themselves. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

Charles Spurgeon

Any time you get into that chip on the shoulder, trying to prove that I can do this and I can do that, it takes away from what you're capable of doing and who you are as a player, as well as a person.

Donovan McNabb

The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The mind which is most capable of receiving impressions is very often the least capable of drawing conclusions.

Virginia Woolf

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.

Erin Morgenstern

If I thought that any of this was pre ordained, then it takes away any kind of incentive to struggle, or to put up with things, to reach for those impossible dreams, all those dramatic things.

Gary Numan

All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

Walter Bagehot

We're all capable of being more than we presently are, and the effort that it takes and the will that it takes and sometimes the trauma and tragedy that it takes to force us into that kind of growth is the story of our lives.

Scott Derrickson

There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.