ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUOTES IV

U.S. President (1809-1865)

Abraham Lincoln quote

I believe I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

response to a serenade, December 6, 1864


You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 22, 1855


Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, February 22, 1842


If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. Why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fragment of a speech from 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

Tags: slavery


The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to William H. Herndon, July 10, 1848


I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to John T. Stuart, January 23, 1841

Tags: depression


If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, June 16, 1858


We cannot escape history.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

annual message, December 1, 1862

Tags: history


Without the assistance of that Divine Being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, February 11, 1861

Tags: God


All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, July 17, 1858


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.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech in the United States House of Representatives, January 12, 1848

Tags: revolution


I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky or Virginia, or any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery--thus giving the judge an opportunity to make himself eloquent and valiant against us in fighting for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery or any other existing institution. Then what becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the rights of States, which are assailed by no living man?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858


If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854


In law it is a good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to Usher F. Linder, February 20, 1848


It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

attributed, The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln

Tags: vice


Military glory -- that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech in opposition to the Mexican-American War, January 12, 1848

Tags: war


Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, July 17, 1858


The judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the judge's speech (and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party in regard to slavery had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language that "he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858

Tags: slavery


The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, none who would do more to preserve it, but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, February 21, 1861

Tags: peace


The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854