Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.”

“The Lord spared the fitten and the rest he seen fitten to die.”

“In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it.”

“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 adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”

“If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.”

“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.”

“I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

“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.

“You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”

“My God! My God! What will the country say?”

“As President Lincoln said in his time, ‘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.’ ”

“Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it.”

“Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay.”

“So let us pray, not for him but for overselves and for all those whose job it is to wear those great big shoes he left this nation to fill...”

“I’m sorry, I heard that somebody in your party had a letter from Abraham Lincoln, I assumed it was you.”

“The story is told from the point of views of Lincoln’s rambunctious two boys, Willie and Tad. Through their observations, readers learn about Lincoln, about the politics of the time, and about daily life and family life in the mid 19th century.”

“But to his rambunctious sons, Abraham Lincoln was above all a playful and loving father. Here is Lincoln as seen by two of his boys.”

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

“It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

“We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

“Jeff frowned. He wished the Missouri bushwhackers would live by the rule Mr. Lincoln had laid down in his speech at Leavenworth. […] But neither side had heeded Lincoln’s gentle advice.”