105 Abraham Lincoln Quotes. Best Quotes by Abraham Lincoln
Last Updated: 11 January 2024
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Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was born in Kentucky, United States. Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer and served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War. Lincoln came from humble beginnings. He was self-educated. In 1836, after passing the bar examination, Abraham Lincoln began to practice law and became a lawyer.
Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was the descendant of a weaver’s apprentice who had migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. Abraham Lincoln was fond of the Bible and knew it well. Lincoln also was fond of Shakespeare. Abraham Lincoln was married to Mary Todd. The couple had four children: Robert Todd Lincoln, William Wallace Lincoln, Edward Baker Lincoln, Tad Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln is remembered and admired for his emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War, and his leadership during the conflict.
Abraham Lincoln is renowned for his wisdom and eloquence. His words continue to resonate across generations, as they offer timeless insights and inspiration in today’s world. From addressing the tumultuous period of the Civil War to advocating for equality and justice, Lincoln’s quotes encapsulate his enduring legacy as a leader and a visionary.
As we delve into the treasure trove of Abraham Lincoln quotes, we uncover profound nuggets of wisdom that transcend time and circumstance. Whether it’s his stirring call for unity in a divided nation or his enduring belief in the power of perseverance, Lincoln’s words ignite hope and resilience within us. Join us on a journey through history as we explore some of the best quotes by Abraham Lincoln that continue to inspire optimism, courage, and fortitude in our modern lives.
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Here are some of the most memorable quotes by Abraham Lincoln.
“I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” – Abraham Lincoln
“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” – Abraham Lincoln
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“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” – Abraham Lincoln
“My father taught me to work, but not 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.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I have a congenital aversion to failure.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” – Abraham Lincoln
“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.” – Abraham Lincoln
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” – Abraham Lincoln
“You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” – 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
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” – Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I will prepare and someday my chance will come.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.” – Abraham Lincoln
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Perhaps a man’s character was like a tree, and his reputation like a shadow; the shadow is what we think of it, the tree is like the real thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.” – Abraham Lincoln
“We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety clouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.” – Abraham Lincoln
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“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
“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposite to it, in his love of justice.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.” – Abraham Lincoln
“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
“My concern is not whether God is on our side; My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” – Abraham Lincoln
“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The best thing about the future is that is comes one day at a time.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” – Abraham Lincoln
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” – Abraham Lincoln
“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.” – Abraham Lincoln
“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold my hands while my enemies stab me.” – Abraham Lincoln
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.” – Abraham Lincoln
“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.” – Abraham Lincoln
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Let us remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.” – Abraham Lincoln
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“I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.” – Abraham Lincoln
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement, I have the best of the bargain.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.” – 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
“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you cannot fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.” – Abraham Lincoln
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln
“It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the sky and say there is no God.” – Abraham Lincoln
“If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.” – Abraham Lincoln
“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.” – Abraham Lincoln
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Love is the chain to lock a child to its parent.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” – Abraham Lincoln
“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.” – Abraham Lincoln
“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.” – Abraham Lincoln
“There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.” – Abraham Lincoln
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.” – Abraham Lincoln
“For people who like that kind of a book that is the kind of book they will like.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Be sure you put your feet in the right place and then stand firm.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, for at all, or do so well, for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.” – 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
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.” – Abraham Lincoln
“This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I desire to so 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 of me.” – Abraham Lincoln
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 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
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead us to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus, by example, assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” – Abraham Lincoln
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“There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” – Abraham Lincoln
“You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” – Abraham Lincoln
“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.” – Abraham Lincoln
105 Abraham Lincoln Quotes. Best Quotes by Abraham Lincoln – Conclusion
Abraham Lincoln, who served as the 16th President of the United States, is renowned for his intelligence and ability to express himself persuasively. His words remain influential through the years, providing timeless wisdom and motivation in our modern era. Lincoln’s quotations embody his lasting impact as a leader and a forward-thinker.
The timeless wisdom and profound insight found in the quotes of Abraham Lincoln continue to resonate with people around the world. His words have inspired countless individuals to strive for a better future, to stand up for what is right, and to never lose hope in the face of adversity. As we reflect on these powerful quotes, let us carry forward Lincoln’s legacy of empathy, integrity, and perseverance. Let us embrace his belief in unity and equality as guiding principles for our own lives. May we all find inspiration in his words and work together to build a brighter tomorrow for generations to come.
Noemi is the Founder of Online Harbour. Noemi is also the Founder and CEO at CG Strategies. Noemi has a global entrepreneurial and futuristic mindset. Noemi holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration [MBA]. Noemi has also done extensive studies in IT, Computer Sciences, and the Financial Markets.
Noemi has extensive working experience in leadership, management and executive roles in Australian and in International companies. Noemi has been highlighted as one of the top Australians and Global Influencers, and a LinkedIn Top Voice by LinkedIn. To find out more about Noemi; visit her LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and Facebook, and YouTube profiles.