Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

I hate [slavery] because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.

A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.

A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

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

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

Better remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it the tree is the real thing.

Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

Find out what whiskey he drinks and send all of my generals a case, if it will get the same results. - in reply to comments about General Grant's drinking problems

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Give me six minutes to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

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

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

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

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me 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.

Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory.

No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention.

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy.

People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.