Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.”

“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”

“I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.”

“If i get 8 hours to cut a tree i'llspend 7 hours to sharp myknife.”

“I was raised to farm work.”

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

“Gratefully accepting the proffered honor, [to inscribe a new legal work to him] I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.”

“Why don't you laugh? If I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

“A fellow once came to me to ask for an appointment as a minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally, he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers. It is sometimes well to be humble.”

“Others have been made fools of by the girls; but, this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,made a fool of myself.”

“Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil.”

“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.”

“Nothing is more damaging to you than to do something that you believe is wrong.”

“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the Declaration of Independence that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

“I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.”

“I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.”

“If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they'd have to sleep standing up.”

“I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."”

“I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.”

“The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes.”

“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world.”

“The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.”

“One is a majority if he is right.”

“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”

“Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”