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114 Best Abraham Lincoln Quotes to Inspire Greatness in You

Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln quotes on love
Abraham Lincoln quotes on love

Abraham Lincoln was birth on February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky and died on April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C. He was an American minister, politician, and lawyer who served as the sixteen presidents of the United States from 1861 until his murder in April 1865 and his byname Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter. His family shifted to India when he was seven, and he grew up on the edge of the frontier. Read 114 Abraham Lincoln Quotes to Inspire Greatness in You.

Lincoln directed the nation through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy. Abraham was a “prairie lawyer,” concentrated on his all-embracing law practice in the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 -1849. Lincoln joined the new Republican party—and the ongoing debate over sectionalism—in 1856.

On April 14, 1865, when he was attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Abraham was shot by Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. The assassination was a section of a larger plot to eliminate the Northern government that also left Secretary of State William Seward grievously injured. Lincoln died the next day and with him the hope of reconstructing the nation without bitterness.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Read 114 Best Abraham Lincoln Quotes and to Inspire Greatness in You. Quotes on Friends, Love, Leadership, Education, Leadership, Success, Happiness, Freedom.

Abraham Lincoln Funny Quotes

Abraham Lincoln quotes funny
Abraham Lincoln quotes funny

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.”

“The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.”

“He has a right to criticize, who has the heart to help.”

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

“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, for at all, or do so well, for themselves.”

“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”

“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.”

“There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Friends

Abraham Lincoln quotes on Friends
Abraham Lincoln quotes on Friends

“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.”

“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”

“The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man’s course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.”

“What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?”

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing.”

“If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.”

“I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.”

“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.”

“It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we are not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Love

Abraham Lincoln quotes on love
Abraham Lincoln quotes on love

“I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold my hands while my enemies stab me.”

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

“Love is the chain to lock a child to its parent.”

“I have a congenital aversion to failure.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

“Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.”

“This is a world of compensations; and he who 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.”

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes about Leadership

Abraham Lincoln quotes about Leadership
Abraham Lincoln quotes about Leadership

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

“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; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

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

“We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety clouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.”

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

“I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is the truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.”

“I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.”

“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh — anything but work.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Education

Abraham Lincoln quotes on education
Abraham Lincoln quotes on education

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

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

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

“Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.”

“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every good 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.”

“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labour diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”

“The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes Civil War

Abraham Lincoln quotes civil war
Abraham Lincoln quotes civil war

“I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. I will close by saying, God bless the women of America!”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“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 it or overthrow it.”

“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.”

“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”

“The best thing about the future is that is coming one day at a time.”

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

“I desire to so 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 Quotes about Freedom

Abraham Lincoln quotes about freedom
Abraham Lincoln quotes about freedom

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

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

“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.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle–the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”

“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”

“I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.”

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will because we destroyed ourselves.”

“Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.”

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

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Success

Abraham Lincoln quotes on success
Abraham Lincoln quotes on success

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

“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”

“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.”

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

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”

“I will prepare and someday my chance will come.”

“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.”

“For people who like that kind of a book that is the kind of book they will like.”

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

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

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

“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.”

Abraham Lincoln Romantic Quotes

Abraham Lincoln romantic quotes
Abraham Lincoln romantic quotes

“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”

“I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement, I have the best of the bargain.”

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

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place and then stand firm.”

“The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.”

“Perhaps a man’s character was like a tree, and his reputation like a shadow; the shadow is what we think of it, the tree is like the real thing.”

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

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

“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’.”

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”

“And in the end, it is not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Happiness

Abraham Lincoln quotes happiness
Abraham Lincoln quotes happiness

“Let us remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”

“Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.”

“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.”

“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

“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 sky and say there is no God.”

“All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.”

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposite to it, in his love of justice.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

“Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.”

“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.”

“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.”

“Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”