» Abraham Lincoln Quotes Home About Abrahamlincoln.org Themes Youth & Family Politics & Presidency Slavery & Emancipation The Civil War Lincoln’s Legacy Features Exhibitions Timelines Essays Documents Video & Audio Lesson Plans Additional Resources The Lincoln Prize The Gilder Lehrman Institute Home About Abrahamlincoln.org Themes Youth & Family Politics & Presidency Slavery & Emancipation The Civil War Lincoln’s Legacy Features Exhibitions Timelines Essays Documents Video & Audio Lesson Plans Additional Resources The Lincoln PrizeThe Gilder Lehrman Institute » Abraham Lincoln Quotes Abraham Lincoln Quotes “Lincoln’s speech is understandable by people of all walks of life, by immigrants , by young people. Lincoln had no pretentions whatsoever. He allowed what he believed to be convincing on the evidence.” –Lewis Lehrman Ambition and Opportunity – Civil War and Secession – Constitution – Criticism – Declaration of Independence – Democracy – Determination and Discipline – Education and Self-Development – Equality – Ethics and Honesty – God and Prayer – Grief and Mourning – Labor and Work – Life – Patience and Perseverance – Public Opinion and Persuasion – Reason and Argument – Slavery and Freedom – United States and Union – War and Soldiers Ambition and Opportunity “I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.” Speech to One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864 “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.” Announcement for office , March 9, 1832 “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838 “Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should have ever got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?” Letter to William H. Herndon, July 22, 1848 “Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” Letter to Quintin Campbell, June 28, 1862 “I say ‘try’; if we never try, we shall never succeed.” Letter to George B. McClellan, October 13, 1862 “You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.” Letter to Joseph Hooker, January 26, 1863 Civil War and Secession “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’.” Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 “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.” Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 “This is essentially a People’s contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders — to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all — to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.” Message to Congress, July 4, 1861 “And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.” Special Message to Congress, July 4, 1861 “The struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.” Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861 “I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me.” Letter to William H. Seward, June 28, 1862 “Broken eggs cannot be mended; but Louisiana has nothing to do now but take her place in the Union as it was, barring the already broken eggs.” Letter to August Belmont, July 31, 1862 “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Message to Congress, December 1, 1862 “In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.” Message to Congress, December 1, 1862 “The proportions of this rebellion were not for a long time understood. I saw that it involved the greatest difficulties, and would call forth all the powers of the whole country.” Reply to Members of the Presbyterian General Assembly, June 2, 1863 “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863 “Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came …. Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 “The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.” Meditation on the Divine Will, circa September 2, 1862 “While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.” Letter to Edwin M. Stanton, March 18, 1864 “In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one.” Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment, August 18, 1864 “There is more involved in this contest than is realized by eery one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.” Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment, August 18, 1864 “Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.” Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 Constitution “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.” Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27, 1856 “Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.” Speech at Chicago, July 10, 1858 “I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.” Speech to the New Jersey Senate, February 21, 1861 “I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.” First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 “My purpose is to be, in my action, just and constitutional; and yet practical, in performing the important duty, with which I am charged, of maintaining the unity, and the free principles of our common country.” Letter to Horatio Seymour, August 7, 1863 “I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, according to the bond of service — the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am responsible to them.” Letter to James Conkling, August 26, 1863 Criticism “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.” Conversation with Francis B. Carpenter Declaration of Independence “Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.” Temperance Address at Springfield , February 22, 1842 “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” Speech at Philadelphia, February 22, 1861 Democracy “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.” Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, January 27, 1838 “Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty.” Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, January 27, 1838 “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, January 27, 1838 “Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.” Speech in the House of Representatives, June 20, 1848 “In leaving the people’s business in their own hands, we cannot be wrong.” Speech in the House of Representatives, July 27, 1848 “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves’.” Fragment on Government, circa July 1, 1854 “Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men…ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.” Fragment on slavery, circa July 1854 “According to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.” Speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854 “When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.” Speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854 “If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.” Speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854 “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle – the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” Speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854 “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” Fragment on Democracy, August 1, 1858 “Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.” Letter to Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859 “The people – the people – are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.” Speech in Kansas, December 1859 “I do not mean to say that this government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with the duty of preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.” Speech at Cincinnati, September 17, 1859 “Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? IS there any better ore qual hope in the world?” First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 “The people will save their government, if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well.” Special Message to Congress, July 4, 1861 “It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals.” Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861 “The people’s will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all.” Response to Serenade, October 19, 1864 “It is said that we have the best government the world ever knew, and I am glad to meet you, the supporters of that government.” Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment, October 24, 1864 “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence, in great emergencies.” Response to a Serenade, November 10, 1864 Determination and Discipline “Happy day, when, all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected, mind all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world.” Temperance Address, February 22, 1852 I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.” Letter to George Latham, July 22, 1860 “Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” Letter to Quintin Campbell, June 28, 1862 “I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.” Speech at Pittsburgh, February 14, 1861 “And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.” Letter to Joseph Hooker, January 26, 1863 Education and Self-Development “All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.” Lecture on Discoveries, Inventions and Improvements, February 22, 1859 “A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.” Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, September 30, 1859 “Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where was but one, is both a profit and pleasure.” Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, September 30, 1859 Equality “I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.” Letter to James N. Brown, October 18, 1858 “I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. ” Debate at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.” Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858 “We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.” Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864 Ethics and Honesty “Holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.” Address to the People of Sangamon County, March 9, 1832 “I made a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to act upon it.” Letter to Eliza Browning, April 1, 1838 “In very truth he wa… truncated (28,508 more characters in archive)