Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

“The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.”

“I do the very best I know how - the very best I can and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

“The things I want to know are in books my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.”

“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

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

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”

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

“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.”

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

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

“The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

“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.”

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

“Lets have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

“The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.”

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.”

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.”

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

“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.”

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

“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.”

“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

“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.”

“I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.”

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

“I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”

“All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.”

“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

“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.”

“I can make more generals, but horses cost money.”

“Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”

“No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.”

“I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.”

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

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

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”

“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.”

“When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.”

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. 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.”

“There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'”

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

“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.”

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