Abraham Lincoln Quotes

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous.

We know the court that made it has

often overruled its own decisions,

and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

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.

A capacity, and taste,

for reading gives access to whatever

has already been discovered by others.

Important principles may,

and must,

be inflexible.

The people will save their government,

if the government itself will allow them.

There is another old poet whose name

I do not now remember who said,

'Truth is the daughter of Time.'

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery,

I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

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.

It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn

that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy

, working at ten dollars per month)

have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth,

and aristocratic family distinction.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution.

That must be maintained,

for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Never stir up litigation.

A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

Never regret what you don't write.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of

his aren't very new at all.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration

that if at the end...

I have lost every other friend on earth,

I shall at least have one friend left,

and that friend shall be down inside of me.

The time comes upon every public man

when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

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.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,

you can never regain their respect and esteem.

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.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day,

if I did not laugh I should die.

I never had a policy;

I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.