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Abraham Lincoln

462 quotes

• “The man who stands by and says nothing, when the peril of his government is discussed, can not be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: to Erastus Corning and Others (12 June 1863) in "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol.6" (The Abraham Lincoln Association, 1953), p. 265

• “Sir; You are directed to have a transport.. sent to the colored colony of San Domingo to bring back to this country such of the colonists there as desire to return.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Orders to the Secretary of War (1 February 1864)

• “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 when crossing streams.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Reply to delegation from the National Union League approving and endorsing "the nominations made by the Union National Convention at Baltimore." New York Times, Herald, and Tribune (10 June 1864) Collected Works of Abra…

• “I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Likely spurious quote, UNVERIFIED ATTRIBUTE - Quoted in The Lexington Observer & Reporter (16 June 1864)

• “Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Edwin Stanton (14 July 1864); published in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John Hay

• “In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Words on being presented with a Bible, as reported in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle (8 September 1864)

• “I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, 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 (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Reply to Missouri Committee of Seventy (30 September 1864)

• “In a great national crisis like ours unanimity of action among those seeking a common end is very desirable — almost indispensable. And yet no approach to such unanimity is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority simply because it is the will of the majority.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fourth State of the Union Address (December 6, 1864)

• “It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to Heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church — bless all the churches — and blessed be to God, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: To the 1864 general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln : A History Vol. 6 (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, Ch. 15, p. 324

• “Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Thurlow Weed (15 March 1865), reproduced in Lord Charnwood (1916), Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

• “I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII

• “I propose now closing up by requesting you play a certain piece of music or a tune. I thought "Dixie" one of the best tunes I ever heard... I had heard our adversaries over the way had attempted to appropriate it. I insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it... I presented the question to the Attorney-General, and he gave his opinion that it is our lawful prize... I ask the Band to give us a good turn upon it.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: At the end of the Civil War, asking that a military band play "Dixie" (10 April 1865) as quoted in Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (1962) by Hans Nathan. Variant account: "I have always thought "Dixie"…

• “Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War (1922) by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson.

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

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In my opinion the religion that makes men rebel and fight against their government is not the genuine article, nor is the religion the right sort which reconciles them to the idea of eating their bread in the sweat of other men's faces. It is not the kind to get to heaven on.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 (1895), by Ward Hill Lamon, p. 90

• “He's the quietest little fellow you ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew. I believe he had been in this room a minute or so before I knew he was here. Grant is the first general I have had. You know how it's been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, they all wanted me to be the general. Now it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first general I've had that didn't.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience — to reject all progress — all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel?”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us 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 (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Why, when all desire to have this controversy settled, can we not settle it satisfactorily? One reason is, we want it settled in different ways. Each faction has a different plan, they pull different ways, and neither has a decided majority. In my humble opinion, the importance and magnitude of the question is underrated, even by our wisest men. If I be right, the first thing is to get a just estimate of the evil — then we can provide a cure.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “On the other hand, the free states carry on their government on the principle of the equality of men. We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some men would make it a question of indifference, neither right nor wrong, merely a question of dollars and cents, the Almighty has drawn a line across the land, below which it must be cultivated by slave labor, above which by free labor. They would say: 'If the question is between the white man and the negro, I am for the white man; if between the negro and the crocodile, I am for the negro.' There is a strong effort to make this policy of indifference prevail, but it can not be a durable one. A 'don't care' policy won't prevail, for every body does care.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We want those who think slavery wrong to quit voting with those who think it right. They don't treat it as they do other wrongs. They won't oppose it in the free states for it isn't there, nor in the slave states for it is there; don't want it in politics, for it makes agitation; not in the pulpit, for it isn't religion; not in a Tract Society, for it makes a fuss. There is no place for its discussion. Are they quite consistent in this?”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If those democrats really think slavery wrong they will be much pleased when earnest men in the slave states take up a plan of gradual emancipation and go to work energetically and very kindly to get rid of the evil. Now let us test them. Frank Blair tried it; and he ran for Congress in '58, and got beaten. Did the democracy feel bad about it? I reckon not, I guess you all flung up your hats and shouted 'Hurrah for the Democracy!'”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Democracy are given to 'bushwhacking'. After having their errors and mis-statements continually thrust in their faces, they pay no heed, but go on howling about Seward and the 'irrepressible conflict'. That is 'bushwhacking'. So with John Brown and Harper's Ferry. They charge it upon the Republican party and ignominiously fail in all attempts to substantiate the charge. Yet they go on with their bushwhacking, the pack in full cry after John Brown.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The democrats had just been whipped in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and seized upon the unfortunate Harper's Ferry affair to influence other elections then pending. They said to each other, 'Jump in, now's your chance', and were sorry there were not more killed. But they didn't succeed well. Let them go on with their howling. They will succeed when by slandering women you get them to love you, and by slandering men you get them to vote for you.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Mister Lincoln then took up the Massachusetts shoemakers' strike, treating it in a humorous and philosophical manner, and exposing to ridicule the foolish pretense of Senator Douglas, that the strike arose from 'this unfortunate sectional warfare'. Mister Lincoln thanked God that we have a system of labor where there can be a strike. Whatever the pressure, there is a point where the workman may stop.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He didn't pretend to be familiar with the subject of the shoe strike, probably knew as little about it as Senator Douglas himself. This strike has occurred as the Senator says, or it has not. Shall we stop making war upon the South? We never have made war upon them. If any one has, better go and hang himself and save Virginia the trouble. If you give up your convictions and call slavery right as they do, you let slavery in upon you, instead of white laborers who can strike, you'll soon have black laborers who can't strike.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I have heard that in consequence of this 'sectional warfare', as Douglas calls it, Senator Mason of Va., had appeared in a suit of homespun. Now up in New Hampshire, the woolen and cotton mills are all busy, and there is no strike. They are busy making the very goods Senator Mason has quit buying! To carry out his idea, he ought to go barefoot! If that's the plan, they should begin at the foundation, and adopt the well-known 'Georgia costume' of a shirt-collar and pair of spurs!”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It reminded him of the man who had a poor old lean, bony, spavined horse, with swelled legs. He was asked what he was going to do with such a miserable beast, the poor creature would die. 'Do?' said he. 'I'm going to fat him up; don't you see that I have got him seal fat as high as the knees?' Well, they've got the Union dissolved up to the ankle, but no farther!”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The 'Union' arrangements are all a humbug. They reverse the scriptural order, calling the righteous and not sinners to repentance. Let us not be slandered or intimidated to turn from our duty. Eternal right makes might. As we understand our duty, let us do it!”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The truth is, that this question is one of national importance, and we cannot help dealing with it: we must do something about it, whether we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating. It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in earnest, and really settled. And one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You have done nothing, and have protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something that you are now doing. What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your institutions be wholly changed; let your State Constitutions be subverted, glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade — for what? You have brought owned labor with it to compete with your own labor, to underwork you, and to degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms?”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “From this place he removed to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the autumn of 1816. Abraham then being in his eighth year. ...though very young, was large for his age, and had an ax put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument — less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Abraham took an early start as a hunter, which was never much improved afterwards. A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle-gun standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. ...Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest. He studied with nobody. He still mixed in the surveying to pay board and clothing bills. When the legislature met, the law-books were dropped, but were taken up again at the end of the session. He was reëlected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license, and on April 15, 1837, removed to Springfield, and commenced the practice — his old friend Stuart taking him into partnership.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In 1848, during his term in Congress, he advocated General Taylor's nomination for the presidency, in opposition to all others, and also took an active part for his election after his nomination...”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]orking men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]hile man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind; and therefore, without entering upon the details of the question, I will simply say, that I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[I]n 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.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse. 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.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new, and the countries of Europe are densely populated, if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to throw aught in their way, to prevent them from coming to the United States.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]orking men are the basis of all governments. That remark is due to them more than to any other class, for the reason that there are more of them than of any other class. And as your address is presented to me not only on behalf of workingmen, but especially of Germans, I may say a word as to classes. I hold the value of life is to improve one's condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing. I am for that thing.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.”

  Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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