“Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. 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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where.... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I belive that people should fight for what they believe and only what they believe.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You can complain because a rose has thorns, or you can rejoice
Because the thorns have a rose.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
