Quotes By Abraham Lincoln

Of course I would have preferred success; but failing in that, I have no regrets for having rejected all advice to the contrary, and resolutely made the struggle.

I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency.

Stand by your principles; stand by your guns; and victory complete and permanent is sure at the last.

Writing ... is the great invention of the world.

The inclination to exchange thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature.

Is he [youth] not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?

I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way.

Though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.

The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred, defeats.

Just think of such a sucker as me as President!

I think the negro is included in the word 'men' used in the Declaration of Independence.

Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to Death ?

We have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor, and our own suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people's business.

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

There is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases.

Douglas is playing cuttlefish, a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it.

I would despise myself if I supposed myself ready to deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing to be treated myself.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.

When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him - at least, I find it so with myself; but when the misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.