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.
- Abraham Lincoln
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- Abraham Lincoln
I care not much for a man's religion
whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
- Abraham Lincoln
No matter how much cats fight,
there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
- Abraham Lincoln
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell,
it is simply purgatory.
- Abraham Lincoln
The Lord prefers common-looking people.
That is why he makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs
and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
How many legs does a dog have
if you call the tail a leg? Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- Abraham Lincoln
The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
- Abraham Lincoln
In great contests, each party claims to act
in accordance with the will of God.
Both may be, and one must be wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act
as the destroyer of liberty,
especially as the sheep was a black one.
Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed
upon a definition of the word liberty;
and precisely the same difference
prevails today among us human creatures
- Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside.
If we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln
Everybody likes a compliment.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution.
That must be maintained, for it is
the only safeguard of our liberties.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
- Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
- Abraham Lincoln
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people themselves, and not their servants,
can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
- Abraham Lincoln
People are just as happy
as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
The time comes upon every public man
when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln (sometimes attributed to P. T. Barnum)
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
- Abraham Lincoln
Some single mind must be master,
else there will be no agreement in anything.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense
and too noble to give it.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?
Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln
Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
- Abraham Lincoln
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any other one thing.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar,
but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
- Abraham Lincoln
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot escape the responsibility
of tomorrow by evading it today.
- Abraham Lincoln
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
I do the very best I know how -
the very best I can;
and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
- Abraham Lincoln
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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