“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
―
Abraham Lincoln
“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Force is all conquering, but it's victories are short lived.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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 purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names, liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
