“On peut tromper une partie du peuple tout le temps et tout le peuple une partie du temps, mais on ne peut pas tromper tout le peuple tout le temps.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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 what light I have.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where.... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who have entered college more easily.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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. … 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. (“A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863)”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
