Top 130 Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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 am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance.

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

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

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.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

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.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

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

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

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.

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

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.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

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.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

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

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

Everybody likes a compliment.

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

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.

If there should prove to be one real, living Free State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it might be well to catch him and stuff and preserve his skin as an interesting specimen of that soon-to-be-extinct variety of the genus Democrat.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

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

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.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

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

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

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’ Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care anything about it.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

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.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

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.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

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

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

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.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

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.

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

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

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.