Abraham Lincoln - Select Quotes
February 23, 2008
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
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.
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.
~ September 30, 1859 - Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
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.
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.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
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.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
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.
“I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams’.”
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, “Reply to Delegation from the National Union League” (June 9, 1864), p. 384.
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races.
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 all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, “Letter to Horace Greeley” (August 22, 1862), p. 388.
On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self evident lie.
~ August 15, 1855 - Letter to George Robertson
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 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, (August 1, 1858), p. 532.
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.
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.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
~ Lincoln’s Cooper Institute Address, February 27, 1860.
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.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.
~ September 7, 1864 - Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, “Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin” (September 30, 1859), pp. 481-482.
There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.
~ Herndon’s Life of Lincoln by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik (New York, Da Capo Press, 1983), p. 354.
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