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
The Lord prefers common-looking people.
That is why he makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell,
it is simply purgatory.
- Abraham Lincoln
No matter how much cats fight,
there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
- 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
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
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
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- 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
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- 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
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- 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
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
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- 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
The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
- Abraham Lincoln
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward,
and yet not go forward fast enough
to wreck the country's cause.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- 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
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
- Abraham Lincoln
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another,
but let him work diligently and build one for himself,
thus by example assuring that his own
shall be safe from violence when built.
- Abraham Lincoln
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
- 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
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets,
but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
- 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
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
People are just as happy
as they make up their minds to be.
- 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
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
- Abraham Lincoln
Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people will save their government,
if the government itself will allow them.
- 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
He who molds the public sentiment...
makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense
and too noble to give it.
- Abraham Lincoln
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.
They have clung to me all my life.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln
Let's have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
- Abraham Lincoln
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln
I was losing interest in politics,
when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.
What I have done since then is pretty well known.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
- Abraham Lincoln
I do not think much of a man who is
not wiser today than he was yesterday.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't worry when you are not recognized,
but strive to be worthy of recognition.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
That some achieve great success,
is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people themselves, and not their servants,
can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
- 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
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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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