Abraham Lincoln Quotes

President of the United States from 1861 to 1865

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Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Initially entering politics as a Whig, he became a member of the US congress from Illinois, and later the first Republican president, leading Union forces throughout the moral, constitutional, political and military crises of the American Civil War, during which he abolished slavery and strengthened the U.S. government.

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Alternative Names: Honest Abe • President Lincoln • Abe Lincoln • Uncle Abe • A. Lincoln • Lincoln

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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.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.

I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Mannassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And now allow me to ask "Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Mannassas Junction, to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops?" This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade.

My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania.

All that I am or Hope to be
I owe to My Mother

I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

Meditations on the Divine Will (from an undated manuscript found among his papers by one of his secretaries found among his papers, now generally known as the "Meditations on the Divine Will"):

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, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Say: "Verily, my Lord hath guided me to a way that is straight,— a religion of right— way of Abraham the faithful, and he joined not deities with God." Say: "Truly, my prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death, are (all) for The God, the Lord of the Worlds"