Abraham Lincoln the President, biography, facts and quotes

"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right"

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next"

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"

"Important principles may, and must, be inflexible"

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong"

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better"

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution"

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar"

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly"

"When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees"

"These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have"

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time"

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it"

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet"

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough"

"Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets"

"Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory"

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice"

"Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar"

"A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me"

"I walk slowly, but I never walk backward"

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life"

"I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day"

"You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was"

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people"

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration"

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored"

"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth"

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men"

"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it"

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend"

"I can make more generals, but horses cost money"

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth"

"Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors"

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts"

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

"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end"

"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me"

"The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them"

"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"

"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself"

"The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person"

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent"

"If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem"

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time"

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty"

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just"

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed"

Occup.	President
From	USA
Born	February 12, 1809
Died	April 15, 1865
Aged	56 years

Abraham Lincoln Biography

115 Famous quotes by Abraham Lincoln