“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that this continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman'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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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 pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] 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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Let no feeling of discouragement prey
upon you, and in the end you
are sure to succeed.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down upon my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His, and our cause His cause, that we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. Then and there I made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him, and He did stand by you boys, and I will stand by him. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands, and things would go right at Gettysburg, and that was why I had no fears about you.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
―
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
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away. it's best to let him run"
―
Abraham Lincoln
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
―
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
