“I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If my father's son can become President of these United States, then your father's son can become anything he wishes.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
