Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

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

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

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

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“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.”

“Half finished work generally proves to be labor lost.”

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

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

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

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

“I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

“The emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.”

“If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, as I think there is, there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.”

“You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”

“I have issued the emancipation proclamation, and I can not retract it. After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the "institution"; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand.”

“No one who has never been placed in a like position, can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried.”

“The Emancipation Proclamation was the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the nineteenth century.”

“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 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, that 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.”