Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.[Lincoln's maxim and philosophy]

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 their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.

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

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.

Democracy is the government of the people by the people for the people.

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.

Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.

My dear Sir.Yours of the 13th. is just received. My engagements are such that I can not, at any very early day, visit Rock-Island, to deliver a lecture, or for any other object.As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made.Let this be considered confidential. Yours very truly,{Abraham Lincoln}

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.

Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)

I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.

Abraham Lincoln was asked by an aide about the church service he had attended. Lincoln responded that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent and the topic relevant. The aide said, “Then it was a good service?”Lincoln responded, “No.” The aide protested,“But, Mr. President, you said that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent, and that the topic was relevant.”“Yes,” replied Lincoln, “but he didn’t challenge us to do any great thing.

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

One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.

Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.

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

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,[Abraham Lincoln]April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. PierceSpringfield, Ill.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

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. We must disenthrall ourselves.

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

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.

I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

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

I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every friend on earth I shall have one friend left and that friend shall be down inside me.

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.