Quotes by Abraham Lincoln
(Page 5 of 5)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

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

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

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.

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.

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. This is a most valuable -- a most sacred right -- a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

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

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

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

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.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

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

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

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

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.