ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUOTES IV
U.S. President (1809-1865)
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
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to expect it.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 22, 1842
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
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
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech to Illinois legislature, Sangamo Journal, January 28, 1837
Military glory -- that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in opposition to the Mexican-American War, January 12, 1848
We cannot escape history.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
annual message, December 1, 1862
Without the assistance of that Divine Being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 11, 1861
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
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
Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful. The slave-master himself has a conception of it; and hence the system of tasks among slaves. The slave whom you can not drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and promise him pay for all he does over, he will break you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope, for the rod. And yet perhaps it does not occur to you, that to the extent of your gain in the case, you have given up the slave system, and adopted the free system of labor.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
fragmentary manuscript of a speech on free labor, September 17, 1859?
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
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
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
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
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
attributed, The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln
Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech to the Sub-Treasury, Sangamon Journal, March 6, 1840
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