“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”
―
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
“The best thing a man can do for his children is love their mother.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. 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 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
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Let no feeling of discouragement prey
upon you, and in the end you
are sure to succeed.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Stand with anyone that is right; stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
