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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865) was the 16th President of the United States and led the country during the American Civil War
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- 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.
- Speech to Illinois legislature, (January 1837); This is "Lincoln's First Reported Speech", found in the Sangamo Journal (28 January 1837) according to McClure's Magazine (March 1896); also in Vol. 1, p. 24 of Lincoln's Complete Works, ed. by Nicolay and Hay, (1905)
- At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?— Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!— All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. 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.
- Address to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, (27 January 1838)
- 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.
- Acceptance Speech for the Republican nomination for Senate, (17 June 1858); in this statement Lincoln is quoting the response of Jesus Christ to allegations that he could "cast out demons" only because he was an ally of demons.
- I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
- First Debate with Stephen Douglas, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858) Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. He eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in those states in rebellion against the union, arguably as much as a war measure as a political or moral one.
- Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
- Address to Chicago Abolitionists (10 July 1858); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 501
- With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
- I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ...
And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
- Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (18 September 1858).
- 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 or overthrow it.
- First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861)
- I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
- Letter to Horace Greely (22 August 1862)
- Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continents a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us— that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- The Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863)
- I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected.
- The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, "Letter to Albert G. Hodges" (April 4, 1864), p. 281 (Lincoln relating how he came to change his position in favor of abolition)[1]
- Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.... Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. 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.
- Second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865)
- If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope— fervently do we pray— that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
- Second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865)
- 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.
- Second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865)
- Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.
- Quoted in a contemporary issue of the New York Herald, in response to allegations his most successful general drank too much.
Attributed
As with many very notable people, many remarks have been wrongly attributed to Lincoln, and many comments that do not have clear references to contemporary sources (and even a few that do) should be considered highly suspect.
- Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
- Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
- He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
- I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
- If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!
- Lincoln's supposed greeting, in 1862, to Harriet Beecher Stowe , author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
- The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
- Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left behind by those who hustle.
- Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can say that I view it as the most important subject we as a people can be engaged in.
- Well, for those who like that sort of thing, I should think it is just about the sort of thing they would like.
- You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.
- Variants: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
- This is probably the most famous of apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln, but despite sometimes being cited as from a speech in Clinton, Illinois, on September 1858, there are no contemporary records or accounts that he ever declared this, and the earliest known document which contains it is “Abe” Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories (1904) by Alexander K. McClure. The statement has also sometimes been attributed to P. T. Barnum .
Misattributions
- To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
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