“you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 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 word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering 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
“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I belive that people should fight for what they believe and only what they believe.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, 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
“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by and election, neither can they take by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If Abraham Lincoln were alive now, he'd roll over in his grave.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
―
Abraham Lincoln