Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.

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.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

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.

There is nothing true anywhere, The true is nowhere to be seen; If you say you see the true, This seeing is not the true one.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

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.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

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 exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

Everybody likes a compliment.

Sir, 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.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

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.