“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down...”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“God must have loved the plain people; He made so many of them.”
―
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
“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
