Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.

It is for us and our time...to say the right makes might.

When you have got a ticket to send, and you're not a top costumer, it's best not to waste your time.

We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time.

A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.

I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.

I ... ran for Legislature [in 1832] ... and was beaten-the only time I have been beaten by the people.

The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.

If you love something, set it free.

Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms.

It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing.

Friendship is the start for what you call love.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

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.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.