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Abraham Lincoln Quotes

1809–1865 United States

Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Initially entering politics as a Whig, he became a member of the US congress from Illinois, and later the first Republican president, leading Union forces throughout the moral, constitutional, political and military crises of the American Civil War, during which he abolished slavery and strengthened the U.S. government.

United States
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Politicians

Also known as: Abe Lincoln, Abraham lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln, Abraham, The Gettysburg Address

Random Abraham Lincoln quote

351 quotes

If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.

Misattributed

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

Misattributed to Lincoln in Mark Gold (1998)

I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy.

Misattributed

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

Misattributed Vernon K. McLellan (2000)

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

Misattributed

Whatever you are, try to be a good one.

Misattributed

I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.

Attributed Costs of Administering Reparation for Work Injuries in Illinois (1952)

We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.

Attributed

It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Misattributed

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, and beer.

Misattributed

Money is the creature of law and creation of the original issue of money should be maintained as an exclusive monopoly of national government.… Democracy will rise superior to Money Power.

Misattributed

When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends."

Attributed as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.

Attributed

My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.

Misattributed

It is my ambition and desire to so administer the affairs of the government while I remain President that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend remaining and that one shall be down inside me.

Attributed

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.

Attributed

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Misattributed

The President to-night has a dream:—He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said:—"He is a very common-looking man". The President replied:—"The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them".

Attributed

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. Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man's wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with a man while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Misattributed

When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus.

Attributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Abraham Lincoln (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.