“It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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
“Let no feeling of discouragement prey
upon you, and in the end you
are sure to succeed.”
―
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
“if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. ”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
―
Abraham Lincoln
