Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.

If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they'd have to sleep standing up.

I can't spare this man, he fights!

A man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.

If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.

The land, the earth God gave to man for his home ... should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society ... any more than the air or water.

The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our nature.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.

If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior ofcapital, and deserves muchthe higher consideration.

Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.

Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.