“Don't give up. Come on. Just keep on trying. Don't frown. Smile! You can do it. If you just try a little harder. I've got a feeling this whole thing might just work out okay. You'll see. Don't give up. Tomorrow is a brand new day. Now I want to see all of you get up on your feet and look like you're enjoying yourselves. Come on, let's see some of that famous ‘Pennsylvania optimism’ I've heard so much about..." [Excerpted from the recently discovered preamble to Gettysburg Address]”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”
―
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
“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If Abraham Lincoln were alive now, he'd roll over in his grave.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Teach the children so it won't be necessary to teach the adults.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
―
Abraham Lincoln