Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.

[I feel] somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God, can not long retain it.

Every man over forty is responsible for his face.

This is essentially a people's contest…. It is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.

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.

It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views…. I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.

And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.

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.

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.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.