Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

The President last night had a dream. He was in a party of plain people and as it became known who he was they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said, "He is a common-looking man." The President replied, "Common-looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

If the good people, in their wisdom, shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.

I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter.

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.