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Abraham Lincoln Quotes

American President.
Born On
1809-02-12
Died On
1865-04-15
Birth Place
Hodgenville, Kentucky, United States
Death Place
Petersen House, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Birth Sign
aquarius
Father
Thomas Lincoln
Mother
Nancy Lincoln
Spouse
Mary Todd Lincoln
Nationality
American
Political Leaders, Leaders, Presidents
The 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln is considered to be one of the finest examples of leadership and is admired by millions even today. He did not have an easy childhood as he had witnessed many upheavals in the early stages of his life. This eminent leader received formal education for a period of about 18 months and later emerged as a self taught lawyer. The book "Commentaries on the Laws of England" written by the famous author William Blackstone helped Lincoln prepare himself for a career as a lawyer. By the age of 22, Lincoln even practised law regularly before entering the political arena. Lincoln excelled as a leader and his views were believed to be way ahead of time. He even rescued the country from the clutches of slavery, by abolishing this heinous practice. These are things which almost all of us know about Lincoln, but apart from being a remarkable leader, this president was also known by many for his impeccable sense of humor. It is believed that the former president amused people with his story-telling skills and was too spontaneous in irony, satire and humor. One such instance was a speech during which American politician Stephen Douglas said, "When I behold my honourable opponent," I am reminded of the Holy Writ where it says, "How long, O Lord, how long." "To this jibe, Lincoln remarked, "When I behold my honourable opponent, I, too, am reminded of the Scripture where it says, "The wicked shall be cut short in his day." While his anecdotes do not cease to amuse the masses, Abraham Lincoln quotes never fail to inspire us.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Greatness People Truth
Abraham Lincoln

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.

People Time
Abraham Lincoln

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

People Earth Government
Abraham Lincoln

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Light
Abraham Lincoln

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln

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

Abraham Lincoln

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

Funny Good Memory
Abraham Lincoln

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.

Right
Abraham Lincoln

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

Future
Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Freedom
Abraham Lincoln

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

Abraham Lincoln

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Education Government
Abraham Lincoln

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

Happiness
Abraham Lincoln

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.

People
Abraham Lincoln

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

Angel Hope
Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Character Reputation
Abraham Lincoln

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

Strength
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Abraham Lincoln

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.

Time Freedom Nation
Abraham Lincoln

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

Abraham Lincoln

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

Funny
Abraham Lincoln

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.

People Country Government
Abraham Lincoln

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Greatness
Abraham Lincoln

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

Experience
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Past History
Abraham Lincoln

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Chance
Abraham Lincoln

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

Work History Nation
Abraham Lincoln

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

Good
Abraham Lincoln

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Politics
Abraham Lincoln

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

Law
Abraham Lincoln

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

Success Mind
Abraham Lincoln

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Democracy
Abraham Lincoln

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Genius
Abraham Lincoln

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

Right Heart Help
Abraham Lincoln

Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

Worrying
Abraham Lincoln

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

Friendship Enemies
Abraham Lincoln

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

Justice Compassion
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Abraham Lincoln

Four score 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.

Equality Liberty
Abraham Lincoln

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

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.

Right Duty Faith
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.

Struggles Support
Abraham Lincoln

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Funny
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Violence Work
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.

Power Equality
Abraham Lincoln

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

America Patriotism Time Hope
Abraham Lincoln

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

Good Government
Abraham Lincoln

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

Heaven
Abraham Lincoln

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve - not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country - those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy - the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

People Country
Abraham Lincoln

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Abraham Lincoln

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

Abraham Lincoln

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

Time
Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Funny Ability
Abraham Lincoln

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

Publicity
Abraham Lincoln

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

Desire Slavery
Abraham Lincoln

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

Abraham Lincoln

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.

Prayer Nation
Abraham Lincoln

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

Life
Abraham Lincoln

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Principles
Abraham Lincoln

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

Abraham Lincoln

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

Confidence Respect
Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Slavery
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Life Nature People Power
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Education
Abraham Lincoln

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

Cats
Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, 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.

Liberty
Abraham Lincoln

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.

Good Business
Abraham Lincoln

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

Law
Abraham Lincoln

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

People Freedom Government
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.

Earth
Abraham Lincoln

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

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

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.

History Honor Light
Abraham Lincoln

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

Money People
Abraham Lincoln

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

Fighting
Abraham Lincoln

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Peace
Abraham Lincoln

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.

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.

Immortality
Abraham Lincoln

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

Greatness Success
Abraham Lincoln

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

Life
Abraham Lincoln

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

Business Chance
Abraham Lincoln

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Sweet Talk
Abraham Lincoln

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Art
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.

Desire Earth
Abraham Lincoln

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

Patriotism
Abraham Lincoln

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

Abraham Lincoln

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.

Books
Abraham Lincoln

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

Right
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.

Flowers
Abraham Lincoln

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

Duty
Abraham Lincoln

I am rather inclined to silence.

Silence
Abraham Lincoln

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

Money
Abraham Lincoln

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

Abraham Lincoln

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.

People World Freedom Hope
Abraham Lincoln

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Nothing
Abraham Lincoln

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

Greatness Religious Zeal
Abraham Lincoln

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

Abraham Lincoln

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.

Abraham Lincoln

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

Night
Abraham Lincoln

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