Abraham Lincoln

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 (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) was the 16th President of the United States and led the country during the American Civil War.

Quotes

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.

I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary... and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

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

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

Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

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.

• 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.
  • Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature. (9 March 1832)

• 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.
  • Speech to Illinois legislature, (January 1837); This is "Lincoln's First Reported Speech", found in the Sangamo Journal (28 January 1837) according to McClure's Magazine (March 1896); also in Lincoln's Complete Works (1905) ed. by Nicolay and Hay, Vol. 1, p. 24.

• I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
  • Letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning (1 April 1838)

• Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
  • Speech of the Sub-Treasury (1839), Collected Works 1:178
  • Variant (misspelling): 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; and it shall not deter me.

• I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
  • Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society (22 February 1842), quoted at greater length in John Carroll Power (1889) Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Public Services, Death and Funeral Cortege

• I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.
  • Letter to Allen N. Ford (11 August 1846), reported in Roy Prentice Basler, ed., Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (1990 [1946]).

• 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. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.
  • Speech in the United States House of Representatives (January 12, 1848)

• Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — "I see no probability of the British invading us"; but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."
  To provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.
  • Letter, while US Congressman, to his friend and law-partner William H. Herndon, opposing the Mexican-American War (15 February 1848)

• The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
  • Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)

• Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
  • Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)

• The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him.
  • Letter to William H Herndon (10 July 1848)

• The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.
  • Letter to Joseph Gillespie (13 July 1849)

• Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors 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.
  Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.
  • Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (July 1, 1850?), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings (Vol. 2), 1894.

• There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief — resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.
  • Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (July 1, 1850?), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings (Vol. 2), 1894.

• The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.
  • Letter to George Robertson (15 August 1855)

• You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do more than oppose the extension of slavery.
  I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].
  • Letter to longtime friend and slave-holder Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)

• If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.... Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
  • Letter to Isham Reavis (5 November 1855)

• We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.
  • Speech at Bloomington (29 May 1856)

• Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.
  • Speech at Springfield, Illinois (26 June 1857)

• Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
  • Address to Chicago Abolitionists (10 July 1858); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 501

• Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
  • Letter to Henry L Pierce and others (6 April 1859)

• Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.
  • Letter to Dr. Theodore Canisius (17 May 1859)

• Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougeism as this?
  • Fragments: Notes for Speeches, September 1859, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) Vol. III; No transcripts or reports exist indicating that he ever actually used this expression in any of his speeches.

• We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us… Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.
  • Fragmentary manuscript of a speech on free labor (17 September 1859?)

• 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.
  • Remarks at the Monogahela House (February 14, 1861); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 209

• And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy — a government of the people by the same people — can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.
  • Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

• They have seen in his round, jolly fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and cabinet-appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. Nobody has ever expected me to be president. In my poor, lean lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting.
  • Speech in Springfield, Illinois (17 July 1858), referring to Stephen Douglas. Quoted in Charles Sumner (1861), The Promises of the Declaration of Independence.

• This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from their shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.
  • Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

• Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled — the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains — its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets... Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
  • Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

• It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war-power, in defence of the government, forced upon him. He could but perform this duty, or surrender the existence of the government. No compromise, by public servants, could, in this case, be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular government can long survive a marked precedent, that those who carry an election, can only save the government from immediate destruction, by giving up the main point, upon which the people gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions. As a private citizen, the Executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he, in betrayal of so vast, and so sacred a trust, as these free people had confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink; nor even to count the chances of his own life, in what might follow. In full view of his great responsibility, he has, so far, done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, according to your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views, and your action, may so accord with his, as to assure all faithful citizens, who have been disturbed in their rights, of a certain, and speedy restoration to them, under the Constitution, and the laws. And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.
  • Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

• I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland.
  • Letter to Orville Hickman Browning (22 September 1861)

• The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
  • Veto message, eventually not executed, written as a response to the Second Confiscation Act passed by Congress. (17 July 1862)
  • The Emancipation Proclamation, by John Hope Franklin, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, NY, 1963, page 19

• I am a patient man — always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance. Still I must save this government if possible.
  • Letter to Reverdy Johnson (26 July 1862)

• You and I are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other races. Whether it be right or wrong, I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living amongst us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.
  • Statement to the Deputation of Free Negroes (14 August 1862), in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Baler, Rutgers University Press, 1953, Vol. V, page 371

• My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
  • Letter to Horace Greeley (22 August 1862) Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 5

• May our children and our children's children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.
  • Second Speech at Frederick, Maryland (4 October 1862)

• 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.
  • Second State of the Union Address (1 December 1862)

• 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. We must disenthrall our selves, and then we shall save our country. 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.
  • Second State of the Union Address (1 December 1862)

• Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
  • Letter to Major General Joseph Hooker (26 January 1863)

• We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
  • Upon proclaiming a National Fast Day (30 March 1863)

• The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
  • Address in Baltimore, Maryland (18 April 1864)

• 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 labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
  • Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (21 March 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.
  • 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, June 10, 1864 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7

• I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
  • Quoted in The Lexington Observer & Reporter (16 June 1864)

• Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
  • Letter to Edwin Stanton (14 July 1864). See John Hay (1890), Abraham Lincoln: A History

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

• Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln
  • Letter to Mrs. Bixby in Boston (21 November 1864). Some scholars suggest that John Hay, a secretary of President Lincoln's, actually wrote this letter. The Files of the war department were inaccurate Mrs. Bixby lost two sons.

• Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.
  • Letter to Thurlow Weed (15 March 1865), reproduced in Lord Charnwood (1916), Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others...

• 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.
  • 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.
  • 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" one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it... I now request the band to favor me with its performance."

• Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.
  • Quoted in a contemporary issue of the New York Herald, in response to allegations his most successful general drank too much.

• 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.
  • 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

• I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.
  • As quoted in Costs of Administering Reparation for Work Injuries in Illinois (1952) by Alfred Fletcher Conard, p. 28

• When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
  • Quoted by Charles A. Dana in his book Recollections of the Civil War (1898)

The Lyceum Address (1838)

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?

The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions : Lincoln's address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (27 January 1838)

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.

• In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. — We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.

• At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — 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.
  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.

• I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.

• When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.

• But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. — By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. — Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation.

• Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

• There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.

• That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

• It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.
  • Often the portion of this passage on "Towering genius..." is quoted without any mention or acknowledgment that Lincoln was speaking of the need to sometimes hold the ambitions of such genius in check, when individuals aim at their own personal aggrandizement rather than the common good.

• From the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it.

• Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. — Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.
  Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

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

Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2

• When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. 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. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals. My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

• "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet that argument — I rush in — I take that bull by the horns. I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as well as naturally just: politically wise in saving us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right, — absolutely and eternally right, — but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he pleases with him.
  But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

• Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes!"
  Well! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is that 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. Our Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
  I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.

• Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all compromises — repeal the Declaration of Independence — repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)

We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution.

Speech at Springfield, Illinois on June 26, 1857

In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

• We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. … If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part, based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.

• Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. … In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then, such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation, as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days, Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State Constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to new countries was prohibited; but now, Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. It is grossly incorrect to say or assume, that the public estimate of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the government.

• There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white; and forth-with he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

• I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal-equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, nor for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack. I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and objects of that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that "all men are created equal."

• Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.

• The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government."

The House Divided speech (1858)

Speech at the Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican nomination for US Senate (16 June 1858)]

A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

• 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. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

• "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.
  • In this famous statement Lincoln is quoting the response of Jesus Christ to those who accused him of being able to cast out devils because he was empowered by the Prince of devils, recorded in Matthew 12:25: "And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."

• Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
  Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
  Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.

• The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man, choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.

• Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding — like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand — helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds.

• The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." (2) That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other free State.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

• Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.
  It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," subject only to the Constitution. What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect free freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

• We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly matte the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

• While the opinion of the court, by Chief-Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it.

• Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. This is what we have to do. How can we best do it ?

• There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all this from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He does not care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade — how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free" — unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

• Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?

• Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result.

• Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)

In relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

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.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

• Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes about the fourth of July, for some reason or other. These fourth of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. … We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors — among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe — German, Irish, French and Scandinavian — men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
  • Speech in Reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858).

• Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of this country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! [Cries of "No, No."] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then. It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed upon a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this Government. We had slavery among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let that charter stand as our standard.
  • Speech in reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858).

• My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord, "As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven; but He said, "As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." He set that up as a standard; and he who did most toward reaching that standard, attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us then turn this Government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other. If we do not do so we are turning in the contrary direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes — not intentionally — as working in the traces tend to make this one universal slave nation. He is one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him. My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic, which would detain you too long, continue to-night. I thank you for this most extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night. I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
  • Speech in reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858).

• 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.
  • First Debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858). Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. During the war which followed his election he eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in those states in rebellion against the union, arguably as a war measure rather than as an entirely political or moral initiative.

• With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
  • First debate with Stephen Douglas Ottawa, Illinois, (21 August 1858)

• While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.
  • Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (18 September 1858)

• I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.
  • Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (18 September 1858).

• Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery. You hear me read it from the same speech from which he takes garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to interfere with the institution of slavery, and establish a perfect social and political equality between negroes and white people. Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract from a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in discussing this very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his ground that negroes were not included in the Declaration of Independence: I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
  • Seventh and Last Joint Debate with Steven Douglas, at Alton, Illinois (15 October 1858)

• That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
  • Seventh and Last Joint Debate with Steven Douglas, at Alton, Illinois (15 October 1858)

Cooper Union speech (1860)

Speech to the Cooper Institute, New York, New York (27 February 1860) - Full text online at Wikisource; similar remarks to many of these were made in later speeches elsewhere.

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.

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

• 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.

• Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask — all Republicans desire — in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

• You say you are conservative — eminently conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

• 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?

• 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.

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

• 'But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

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

• Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man — such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care — such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance — such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

• 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.

First Inaugural Address (1861)

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... will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861)

• I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "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." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them.

• In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion — no using of force against, or among the people anywhere.

• 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 or overthrow it.

• Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

• While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

• Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

• 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.

First State of the Union address (1861)

First State of the Union Address (3 December 1861)

• It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.

• 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. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.

Reply to an Emancipation Memorial (1862)

Reply to an Emancipation Memorial presented by Chicago Christians of All Denominations (13 September 1862), published in The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (1865) edited by Henry Jarvis Raymond and Francis Bicknell Carpenter, p. 255

• The subject presented in the memorial is one upon which I have thought much for weeks past, and I may even say for months. I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right.
  The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.

• What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there! And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.

• I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do. I trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views I have not in any respect injured your feelings.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...

The Emancipation Proclamation (1 January 1863) - Full text online

• Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.

• And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

The Gettysburg Address (1863)

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

The Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863), based on the signed "Bliss Copy" - Full text online at Wikisource

• 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. 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.

"If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

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

Letter (4 April 1864) to Albert G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth (recounting their conversation of 26 March 1864). Manuscript at The Library of Congress; also in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, p. 281

• I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.

• When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, — no loss by it any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

• And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.

• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came...

Second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865)

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...

• Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came... Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. 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 be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.

• If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether[."]

• 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 a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Posthumous attributions

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

Soon after his death, Lincoln became popular as a "wise man" to whom quotations were often attributed, and attributions without specific contemporary sources should be viewed skeptically. These attributions are arranged chronologically.

If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

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.

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 up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

• The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.
  • Conversation with private secretary John Hay (23 December 1863), describing a dream Lincoln had that evening, in Abraham Lincoln : A History (1890) by John Hay

• I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.
  • Remark to Gen. Edward H. Ripley (5 April 1865), recalled during Ripley's speech at the 41st annual meeting of the Reunion Society of Vermont Officers (1 November 1904)

• If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
  • As quoted in The Life and Public Service of Abraham Lincoln (1865) Henry J. Raymond

• It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.
  • According to The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by F. B. Carpenter, Lincoln quoted this as having been said to him by a fellow-passenger in a stagecoach. See also "Washington during the War", Macmillan's Magazine 6:24 (May 1862)

• What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
  • As quoted in The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers (1876) by D. M. Bennett

• Perhaps a man's character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
  • As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586

• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
  • Attributed in Lincoln Memorial (1882) edited by Osborn Oldroyd

• All through life, be sure and put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.
  • As recalled by Rebecca R. Pomroy in Echoes from hospital and White House (1884), by Anna L. Boyden, p. 61

• Well, for people that like that sort of thing, I think it is just about the sort of thing they would like.
  • Attributed to "an American President" in Ármin Vámbéry (1884), All the Year Round. It more likely originates in a spoof testimonial that Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) wrote in an advertisement in 1863:

I have never heard any of your lectures, but from what I can learn I should say that for people who like the kind of lectures you deliver, they are just the kind of lectures such people like.

Yours respectfully,
O. Abe

• Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
  • As quoted in Excellent Quotations for Home and School (1888) by Julia B. Hoitt, p. 97. No attribution of this phrase to any existing Lincoln document could be located.

• When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.
  • Quoted in 3:439 Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 439

• 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.
  • Recalled in a letter from Joshua Speed in Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 527

• I do not consider that I have ever accomplished anything without God; and if it is His will that I must die by the hand of an assassin, I must be resigned. I must do my duty as I see it, and leave the rest with God.
  • As quoted in Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (1892) Henry Clay Witney, arguing for Lincoln's religiosity

• I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
  • As quoted in The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln (1896) by Ida Tarbell

• So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!
  • Comment on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, according to Charles Edward Stowe, Lyman Beecher Stowe, "How Mrs. Stowe wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", McClure's magazine 36:621 (April 1911), with a footnote stating: "Mr. Charles Edward Stowe, one of the authors of this article, accompanied his mother on this visit to Lincoln, and remembers the occasion distinctly."
  • Variant: Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made the great war?"
    • Annie Fields, "Days with Mrs. Stowe", Atlantic Monthly 7:148 (August 1896)
  • Variant: So you are the little woman who caused this great war!

• 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 he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
  • Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman

• 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 up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
  • Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech.

• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
  • Written speech fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532

• He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
  • Attributed in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906) by Frederick Trevor Hill — Hill noted that he could find no record of whom Lincoln was insulting.

• I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
  • Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller

• I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
  • As quoted in How to Get What You Want (1917) by Orison Marden

Disputed

• 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.
  • This anecdote apparently dates from 1864 Massachusetts Sunday School Teachers' Convention.
  • This has been portrayed to have been Lincoln's "reply" to an unnamed Illinois clergyman when asked if he loved Jesus, as quoted in the The Lincoln Memorial Album — Immortelles (1882) edited by Osborn H. Oldroyd [New York: G.W. Carleton & Co. p. 366.
    • This incident must have appeared in print immediately after Lincoln's death, for I find it quoted in memorial addresses of May, 1865. Mr Oldroyd has endeavored to learn for me in what paper he found it and on whose authority it rests, but without result. He does not remember where he found it. It is inherently improbable, and rests on no adequate testimony. It ought to be wholly disregarded. The earliest reference I have found to the story in which Lincoln is alleged to have said to an unnamed Illinois minister, "I do love Jesus" is in a sermon preached in the Baptist Church of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, April 19, 1865, by Rev. W. W. Whitcomb, which was published in the Oshkosh Northwestern, April 21, 1865, and in 1907 issued in pamphlet form by John E. Burton.
      • William Eleazar Barton (1920) The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. Further discussion appears in They Never Said It (1989) by Paul F. Boller & John George, p. 91.

• 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.
  • This is probably the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln. Despite being cited variously as from an 1856 speech, or a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, there are no known contemporary records or accounts substantiating that he ever made the statement. The earliest known appearance is October 29, 1886 in the Milwaukee Daily Journal. It later appeared in the New York Times on August 26 and August 27, 1887. The saying was repeated several times in newspaper editorials later in 1887. In 1888 and, especially, 1889, the saying became commonplace, used in speeches, advertisements, and on portraits of Lincoln. In 1905 and later, there were attempts to find contemporaries of Lincoln who could recall Lincoln saying this. Historians have not, generally, found these accounts convincing. For more information see two articles in For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association, "'You Can Fool All of the People' Lincoln Never Said That", by Thomas F. Schwartz (V. 5, #4, Winter 2003, p. 1) and "A New Look at 'You Can Fool All of the People'" by David B. Parker (V. 7, #3, Autumn 2005, p. 1); also the talk page. The statement has also sometimes been attributed to P. T. Barnum, although no references to this have been found from the nineteenth century.
  • Variants:
  • You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
  • You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Misattributed

• He only has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
  • Original quote from William Penn (1693): They have a Right to censure, that have a Heart to help: The rest is Cruelty, not Justice.

• It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to Infidelity.
  • Claimed by atheist Franklin Steiner, on p. 144. of one of his books to have appeared in Manford's Magazine but he never gives a year of publication.

• I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky!
  • See, for example, Albert D. Richardson (1865), The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape. The quotation is based on a comment by Rev. Moncure D. Conway about the progress of the Civil War.
    • It is evident that the worthy President would like to have God on his side: he must have Kentucky.
      • Moncure D. Conway (1862), The Golden Hour

• To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
  • Sometimes attributed to Lincoln since a 1950 speech of Douglas MacArthur citing him as its author, this is actually from a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

• 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.
  • Letter to Judge J. A. Wakefield, after the death of Lincoln's son Willie in 1862, as cited in Abraham Lincoln: was he a Christian? (1893), p. 292, by John Eleazer Remsburg. Historian Merrill Daniel Peterson states in Lincoln in American Memory (1994), p. 227, that the letter has never actually been produced to verify the statement and that there's no correspondence with Wakefield noted in the Collected Works.

• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
  • First attributed to Lincoln in 2002, this seems a paraphrase of a statement in the Lyceum address of 1838, while incorporating language used by Thomas E. Dewey (c. 1944), who said "By the same token labor unions can never be destroyed from the outside. They can only fail if they fail to lend their united support to full production in a free society".

• Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro whatever when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to express by that phrase, white men, men of European birth and European descent, and had no reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, the Fejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great evidence that such was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that at that time every one of the thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration represented a slave-holding constituency, and we know that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them when they signed the Declaration, and yet, if they had intended to declare that the negro was the equal of the white man, and entitled by divine right to an equality with him, they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to have put their negroes on an equality with themselves.
  • Attributed at a few sites to a debate in Peoria, Illinois with Stephen Douglas on 16 October 1858. No historical record of such a debate actually exists, though there was a famous set of speeches by both in Peoria on 16 October 1854, but transcripts of Lincoln's speech on that date do not indicate that he made such a statement. It in fact comes from a speech made by Douglas in the third debate against Lincoln at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858.

• As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
  • Purportedly in a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins (21 November 1864) after the passage of the National Bank Act (3 June 1864), these remarks were attributed to Lincoln as early as 1887 but were denounced by John Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary and biographer:
    • This alleged quotation from Mr. Lincoln is a bald, unblushing forgery. The great President never said it or wrote it, and never said or wrote anything that by the utmost license could be distorted to resemble it.
      • "A Popocratic Forgery" in The New York Times (3 October 1898), p. 1
  • The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of diversity. It is more despotic then monarchy. More insolent than autocracy. More selfish then bureaucracy. I see the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country, will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people. Until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
    • A variant cited to The Lincoln Encyclopedia (1950) by Archer H. Shaw, p. 40, a collection of Lincoln quotations or attributions which has been criticized for including dubious material and known forgeries.
  • The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.
    • A corruption of remarks by William Jennings Bryan at Madison Square Garden (30 August 1906)

• 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.
  • The last sentence is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech, slightly paraphrased. No known contemporary source for the rest. It first appears, attributed to Lincoln, in US religious/inspirational journals in 1907-8, such as p123, Friends Intelligencer: a religious and family journal, Volume 65, Issue 8, 1908.

• Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.
  • Not by Lincoln, this is apparently paraphrased from remarks about honoring him by Hugh Gordon Miller: "I do not believe in forever dragging over or raking up some phases of the past; in some respects the dead past might better be allowed to bury its dead, but the nation which fails to honor its heroes, the memory of its heroes, whether those heroes be living or dead, does not deserve to live, and it will not live, and so it came to pass that in 1909 nearly a hundred millions of people [...] were singing the praises of Abraham Lincoln." — from "Lincoln, the Preserver of the Union", address to the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, 22 February 1911.[1]

• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
  • Actually a statement by William J. H. Boetcker known as "The Ten Cannots" (1916), this has often been misattributed to Lincoln since 1942 when a leaflet containing quotes by both men was published.

• There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as an equal... Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the Negro in the tropics and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.
  • This is from a fictional speech by Lincoln which occurs in The Clansman : An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) by Thomas Dixon, Jr.. On some sites this has been declared to be something Lincoln said "soon after signing" the Emancipation Proclamation, but without any date or other indications of to whom it was stated, and there are no actual historical records of Lincoln ever saying this.

• Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.
  • This was the lead sentence in an article "Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason" by conservative author J. Michael Waller in Insight magazine (23 December 2003) which a copyeditor [http://factcheck.org/article415.html mistakenly put quotation marks around, making it seem a quote of Lincoln.

• If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.
  • This is attributed to Lincoln in the 1960 film adaptation of Pollyanna. In reality, it was fabricated by screenwriter and director David Swift, who had to have thousands of lockets bearing the false inscription recalled after Disney began selling them at Disneyland.

• 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.
  • These remarks in support of a government-regulated money supply were written by Gerry McGeer, who presented them as his interpretation of what Lincoln believed.McGeer, Gerald Grattan (1935). "5 - Lincoln, Practical Economist". The Conquest of Poverty. Gardenvale, Quebec: Garden City Press. pp. pp. 186ff.. Retrieved on 2009-07-29. 

• To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.
  • Quoted in a Edith A. Sawyer (1899) Mary Cameron

• If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
  • Attributed in Evan Esar (1949), The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

• I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.
  • Attributed in Laura Haddock (1931), Steps Upward in Personality

• I am not concerned that you fall; I am concerned that you arise.
  • Attributed in Deborah Gillan Straub (1996), Native North American Voices

• I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
  • No known source from Lincoln; previously attributed to Sigismund
    • Do I not effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?
      • Sigismund as quoted in The Sociable Story-teller (1846)

• If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?
  • Attributed in Jean Dresden Grambs (1959), Abraham Lincoln Through the Eyes of High School Youth

• It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
  • Variously attributed to Lincoln, Elbert Hubbard, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Socrates

• Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
  • Attributed in Henry Louis Mencken (1942), A New Dictionary of Quotations

• You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
  • Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow (1955), Speaker's Book of Epigrams and Witticisms

• The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it.
  • Attributed in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards; this is earlier attributed to Theodore Roosevelt in Life of William McKinley (1901) by Samuel Fallows, and could be derived from the remarks of Ulysses S. Grant in his First Inaugural Address (4 March 1869): "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution."

• The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.
  • Quoted in Victor J. Stenger (1990), Physics and Psychics

• I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
  • Attributed to Lincoln in Mark Gold (1998), Animal century . Also attributed to Rowland Hill in Henry Woodcock (1879), Wonders of Grace

• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
  • Quoted in Vernon K. McLellan (2000) Wise Words and Quotes

Quotes about Lincoln

For me, this is a constant reassurance that the cause of peace will triumph and that ours can be the future that Lincoln gave his life for: a future free of both tyranny and fear. ~ George H. W. Bush

Mr. Lincoln's words show that upon him anxiety and sorrow had wrought their true effect. The address gives evidence of a moral elevation most rare in a statesman, or indeed in any man. ~ William Gladstone

Now he belongs to the ages... ~ Edwin M. Stanton

These are arranged alphabetically by author, followed by some of the more notable anonymous quotations about him.

• The Illinois State Republican Convention met at Bloomington on May 29, 1856. It furnished the setting for one of the most dramatic episodes of Lincoln's life ... A speech by Lincoln was rarely an ordinary occurrence, but on this occasion he made one of the really great efforts of his life. So powerful was his eloquence that the reporters forgot to take notes of what he was saying. Several commenced, but in a few minutes they were entirely captured by the speaker's power, and their pencils were still.
  • Paul M. Angle, on Lincoln's Lost Speech, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln's Lost Speech

• Perhaps nowhere do we learn more about Lincoln even now than in a portrait that I talked about last month off the coast of Malta before meeting Chairman Gorbachev. It is, as this one is, by George Healy, and hangs on the wall of my office upstairs. And in it you see the agony and the greatness of a man who nightly fell on his knees to ask the help of God. The painting shows two of his generals and an admiral meeting near the end of a war that pitted brother against brother. And outside at the moment a battle rages. And yet what we see in the distance is a rainbow — a symbol of hope, of the passing of the storm. The painting's name:The Peacemakers. And for me, this is a constant reassurance that the cause of peace will triumph and that ours can be the future that Lincoln gave his life for: a future free of both tyranny and fear.
  • George H. W. Bush, Remarks Introducing the Presidential Lecture Series (7 January 1990)

• The characteristic which struck me most was his superabundance of common sense. His power of managing men, of deciding and avoiding difficult questions, surpassed that of any man I ever met. A keen insight of human nature had been cultivated by the trials and struggles of his early life. He knew the people and how to reach them better than any man of his time. I heard him tell a great many stories, many of which would not do exactly for the drawing-room; but for the person he wished to reach, and the object he desired to accomplish with the individual, the story did more than any argument could have done.
  • Chauncey Depew, Testimony XXIV in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (1886) edited by Allen Thorndike Rice

• In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
  • Frederick Douglass (1892), Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

• I assure you, that this inestimable memento of his Excellency will be retained in my possession while I live — an object of sacred interest — a token not merely of the kind consideration in which I have reason to know that the President was pleased to hold me personally, but as an indication of his humane interest in the welfare of my whole race.
  • Frederick Douglass in a letter to Mary Todd Lincoln (17 August 1865)

• Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I as­sure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed.
  Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse."
  • Dwight Eisenhower, "Remarks at the Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln", Hodgenville, Kentucky April 23, 1954. The story originates from F. A. Mitchel, son and aide of General Mitchel.

• I am taken captive by so striking an utterance as this. I see in it the effect of sharp trial when rightly borne to raise men to a higher level of thought and feeling. It is by cruel suffering, that nations are sometimes born to a better life: so it is with individual men. Mr. Lincoln's words show that upon him anxiety and sorrow had wrought their true effect. The address gives evidence of a moral elevation most rare in a statesman, or indeed in any man.
  • William Gladstone, upon Lincoln's second inaugural address, as quoted in "Recollections of Lincoln" by James Grant Wilson in Putnam's Magazine Vol. 5, No. 6, (March 1909)

• If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.
  • Dick Gregory, From the Back of the Bus (1962), p. 7

• Now let it be written in history and on Mr. Lincoln's tombstone: "He died an unbeliever."
  • William H. Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner in Springfield since 1844, on Lincoln's religion. Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, 1896. Quoted in Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby, 2004.

• Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech, 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial

• I went to the White House shortly after tea where I found "the original gorilla," about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!
  • General George B. McClellan (17 November 1861), The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, p. 135. McClellan is said to have often used Edwin M. Stanton's term the "original gorilla" in referring to Lincoln.

• Lincoln's proclamation is even more important than the Maryland campaign. Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He has no initiative, no idealistic impetus, cothurnus, no historical trappings. He gives his most important actions always the most commonplace form. Other people claim to be "fighting for an idea," when it is for them a matter of square feet of land. Lincoln, even when he is motivated by, an idea, talks about "square feet." He sings the bravura aria of his part hesitantly, reluctantly and unwillingly, as though apologising for being compelled by circumstances "to act the lion." The most redoubtable decrees — which will always remain remarkable historical documents — flung by him at the enemy all look like, and are intended to look like, routine summonses sent by a lawyer to the lawyer of the opposing party, legal chicaneries, involved, hidebound actiones juris.
  • Karl Marx, "Comments on the North American Events", Die Presse, 12 October 1862.

• Lincoln marked the half-way post on the road to the sewers. He was a politician first — with devotion as a glorious afterthought.
  • Henry Louis Mencken, in "Kultur in the Republic" in American Mercury (December 1927), p. 251

• Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
  • Will Rogers, quoted in How we elect our Presidents (1952), p. 9.

• If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would have known his name now.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, "The conditions of success", address at the Cambridge Union (26 May 1910), in The New Outlook, 22 January 1919, 121:143

• No man made great by death offers more hope to lowly pride than does Abraham Lincoln; for while living he was himself so simple as often to be dubbed a fool. Foolish he was, they said, in losing his youthful heart to a grave and living his life on married patience; foolish in pitting his homely ignorance against Douglas, brilliant, courtly, and urbane; foolish in setting himself to do the right in a world where the day goes mostly to the strong; foolish in dreaming of freedom for a long-suffering folk whom the North is as anxious to keep out as the South was to keep down; foolish in choosing the silent Grant to lead to victory the hesitant armies of the North; foolish, finally, in presuming that government for the people must be government of the people and by the people. Foolish many said; foolish many, many believed.

  This Lincoln, whom so many living friends and foes alike deemed foolish, hid his bitterness in laughter; fed his sympathy on solitude; and met recurring disaster with whimsicality to muffle the murmur of a bleeding heart. Out of the tragic sense of life he pitied where others blamed; bowed his own shoulders with the woes of the weak; endured humanely his little day of chance power; and won through death what life disdains to bestow upon such simple souls—lasting peace and everlasting glory.

  How prudently—to echo Wendell Phillips—we proud men compete for nameless graves, while now and then some starveling of Fate forgets himself into immortality.

  • Thomas Vernor Smith, memorial address, the Illinois State Senate, February 12, 1935, the 126th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, Lincoln, Living Legend, pp. 3–5 (1940)

• There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages.
  • Edwin M. Stanton, at Lincoln's death (15 April 1865). As quoted in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, p. 302. Though "Now he belongs to the ages" is by far the most accepted quotation of this remark, it is sometimes contended that he said "Now he belongs to the angels" but occurrences of this date back only a very few years. Stanton had originally opposed Lincoln, dubbing him "The Original Gorilla" because of his looks and frontier speech, but eventually grew to admire him.

• You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,
  You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
  Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
  His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face.
  • Tom Taylor, Britannia Sympathises with Columbia, in Punch (May 6, 1865). Assigned to Taylor by Shirley Brooks in his Diary, May 10, 1865. See G. S. Layard's Life, Letters, and Diaries of Shirley Brooks of Punch.

• We leave to some Emil Ludwig or his ilk the drawing of Abraham Lincoln's portrait with rosy little wings. Lincoln's significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means once they were found to be necessary in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation. The question lies not even in which of the warring camps caused or itself suffered the greatest number of victims. History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains — let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!
  • Leon Trotsky, "Their Morals and Ours" 1939

• He [Lincoln] has doctrines, not hatreds, and is without ambition except to do good and serve his country.
  • E. B. Washburn in the House of Representatives on the nomination of Lincoln (May 29, 1860).

• He has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion.
  • Walt Whitman (March 1863), Selected Letters, p. 53
  • Note: Walt Whitman also wrote Oh captain my captain for Lincoln.

• The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.
  • Edmund Wilson, Patriotic gore (1962), p. 115.

It never occurs to some politicians that Lincoln is worth imitating as well as quoting.

• The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.
  • Attributed to the Chicago Times as their editorial following the Gettysburg Address, but never traced in that newspaper's archives

• From time to time, life as a leader can look hopeless. To help you, consider a man who lived through this: Failed in business at age 31. Defeated for the legislature at 32. Again failed in business at 34. Sweetheart died at 35. Had a nervous breakdown at 36. Defeated in election at 38. Defeated for Congress at 43. Defeated for Congress at 46. Defeated for Congress at 48. Defeated for Senate at 55. Defeated for Vice President at 56. Defeated for Senate at 58. Elected President at age 60. This man was Abraham Lincoln.
  • Anonymous; these numbers are years in the 1800s, not ages of his life ^{[citation needed]}

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 458-59.

• "Railsplitter."
  • Lincoln and John Hanks in 1830 split 3,000 rails. Incident related in the House of Representatives by Washburn, and quoted in the Republican State Convention at Decatur, Macon County.

• Some opulent force of genius, soul, and race,
  Some deep life-current from far centuries
  Flowed to his mind and lighted his sad eyes,
  And gave his name, among great names, high place.
  • Joel Benton, Another Washington (Lincoln).

• To set the stones back in the wall
  Lest the divided house should fall.
  The beams of peace he laid,
  While kings looked on, afraid.
  • John Vance Cheney, Lincoln.

• Unheralded, God's captain came
  As one that answers to his name;
  Nor dreamed how high his charge,
  His privilege how large.
  • John Vance Cheney, Lincoln.

• If so men's memories not a monument be,
  None shalt thou have. Warm hearts, and not cold stone,
  Must mark thy grave, or thou shalt lie, unknown.
  Marbles keep not themselves; how then, keep thee?
  • John Vance Cheney, Thy Monument.

• O, Uncommon Commoner! may your name
  Forever lead like a living flame!
  Unschooled scholar! how did you learn
  The wisdom a lifetime may not earn?
  Unsainted martyr! higher than saint!
  You were a man with a man's constraint.
  In the world, of the world was your lot;
  With it and for it the fight you fought,
  And never till Time is itself forgot
  And the heart of man is a pulseless clot
  Shall the blood flow slow, when we think the thought
  Of Lincoln!
  • Edmund Vance Cooke, The Uncommon Commoner.

• A martyr to the cause of man,
  His blood is freedom's eucharist,
  And in the world's great hero list
  His name shall lead the van.
  • Charles G. Halpin, Death of Lincoln.

• When Lincoln died, hate died—
  * * * * * *
  And anger, came to North and South
  When Lincoln died.
  • W. J. Lampton, Lincoln.

• That nation has not lived in vain which has given the world Washington and Lincoln, the best great men and the greatest good men whom history can show. * * * You cry out in the words of Bunyan, "So Valiant-for-Truth passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."
  • Henry Cabot Lodge, Lincoln, address before the Massachusetts Legislature (Feb. 12, 1909).

• Nature, they say, doth dote,
  And cannot make a man
  Save on some worn-out plan
  Repeating us by rote:
  For him her Old World moulds aside she threw
  And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
  Of the unexhausted West,
  With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.
  • James Russell Lowell, A Hero New.

• When the Norn-mother saw the Whirlwind Hour,
  Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
  She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down
  To make a man to meet the mortal need.
  She took the tried clay of the common road—
  Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
  Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
  Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
  It was a stuff to wear for centuries,
  A man that matched the mountains, and compelled
  The stars to look our way and honor us.
  • Edwin Markham, Lincoln, The Man of the People.

• Look on this cast, and know the hand
  That bore a nation in its hold;
  From this mute witness understand
  What Lincoln was—how large of mould.
  • Edmund Clarence Stedman, Hand of Lincoln.

• Lo, as I gaze, the statured man,
  Built up from yon large hand appears:
  A type that nature wills to plan
  But once in all a people's years.
  • Edmund Clarence Stedman, Hand of Lincoln.

• No Cæsar he whom we lament,
  A Man without a precedent,
  Sent, it would seem, to do
  His work, and perish, too.
  • Richard Henry Stoddard, The Man We Mourn Today.

• This dust was once the man,
  Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
  Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
  Was saved the Union of these States.
  • Walt Whitman, Memories of President Lincoln, This Dust Was Once the Man.

• O captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
  The ship has weather'd every rack; the prize we sought is won;
  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring?
  But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red,
  Where on the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
  • Walt Whitman, Captain! My Captain!

• The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is closed and done.
  From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.
  Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells; but I with mournful tread
  Walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
  • Walt Whitman, Captain! My Captain!

External links

• White House Biography
• The Lincoln Institute
  • Mr. Lincoln and Freedom
  • Mr. Lincoln and Friends
  • Mr. Lincoln and the Founders
  • Mr. Lincoln and New York
  • Mr. Lincoln's White House
• Especially for Students: An Overview of Abraham Lincoln's Life
• Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library
• Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress (1850-1865)
• The Lincoln - Douglas Debates (1858)
• Political Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas at Bartleby.com
• Poetry written by Abraham Lincoln
• Abraham Lincoln Online
• The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
• Discussion of John Drinkwater's play Abraham Lincoln
• The Lincoln Memorial Washington, DC
• Abraham Lincoln's Assassination
• John Summerfield Staples, President Lincoln's "Substitute"
• King Lincoln (an archive of articles mostly against Lincoln)
  • "Lincolnian Totalitarians" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
• Abraham Lincoln's Program of Black Resettlement

Documents at Project Gutenberg

• Speeches and addresses
  • Free eBook of Gettysburg Address at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Lincoln Letters at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of State of the Union Addresses at Project Gutenberg
• The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 1: 1832-1843 at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 2: 1843-1858 at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 3: the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 4: the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 5: 1858-1862 at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 6: 1862-1863 at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the - Volume 7: 1863-1865 at Project Gutenberg
• Miscellany
  • Free eBook of A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Volume 6, part 1: Abraham Lincoln at Project Gutenberg
  • Free eBook of Lincoln's Yarns and Stories at Project Gutenberg