Abraham Lincoln quotes

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

“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. ”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Public opinion in this country is everything.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

“Knavery and flattery are blood relations.”

— Abraham Lincoln