Abraham Lincoln Quotes
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How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
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.
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 am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
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.
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
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.
When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
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.
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.
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
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.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve - not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country - those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy - the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.
I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord's side.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles - the oppression of tyranny - to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
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.
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.
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
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.
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.
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.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
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 hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.
I am rather inclined to silence.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
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.
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.