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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"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.

if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading

I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.

To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.

Respected Teacher,

My son will have to learn that all men are not just, all men are not true.

But teach him also that for ever scoundrel there is a hero; that for every selfish politician, there is a dedicated leader. Teach him that for every enemy there is a friend.

It will take time, I know; but teach him, if you can, that a dollar earned is far more valuable than five found.

I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.

Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.