Famous Quotes

Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

• My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
• No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
• No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
• No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
• 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.
• Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
• Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
• That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
• The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
• The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
• The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
• The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
• 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.
• The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
• The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
• The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
• 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 time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
• There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'
• 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.
• This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
• 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.
• Whatever you are, be a good one.
• 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.
• When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
• When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
• 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.
• 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.