Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
― 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 heavens and say there is no God.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
― Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1832–1858

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“There are but two types of men who desire war: those who haven’t the slightest intention of fighting it themselves, and those who haven’t the slightest idea what it is. … Any man who has seen the face of death knows better than to seek him out a second time.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me”
― 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

“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 adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“When Lincoln was asked if God was on the Union’s side, Lincoln’s unvarying response was that what was really important was whether they were on God’s side.”
― Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President

“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”
― 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 mean are created free and equal.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

“If Mr. Fantastic and Professor X had a baby, there would be tons of questions, but also it would be Abraham Lincoln.”
― Daniel O'Brien, How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country

“The bottom half of the page had descended into a doodle of a tiny man giving the middle finger to a giant, angry eagle with razor-sharp talons. Beneath it, the caption: To Mock a Killing Bird.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith

“Not married until 33, Abraham Lincoln said, "A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that cannot hurt me.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

“They took it for more than it was, or anyhow for more than it said; the container was greater than the thing contained, and Lincoln became at once what he would remain for them, “the man who freed the slaves.” He would go down to posterity, not primarily as the Preserver of the Republic-which he was-but as the Great Emancipator, which he was not.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

“Lincoln grew immeasurably as he came to think of himself as an “instrument of God’s will.”
― Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President

“Man’s glory lies not, Lincoln thought, in ‘his goodness,’ for this is often nonexistent. He derives glory, instead, from his being made in the image of the Living God.”
― Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President

“A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

“Like most presidents, Lincoln was forever being given dramatic compositions by men in high positions with the assurance that his signature at the foot of the paper, his nod of approval to the man who had written it, would solve everything and enable him to sleep quietly of nights.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“But where Lincoln’s absent hand was felt most keenly was in race relations. Black codes were passed in state after state across the South—as restrictive as the antebellum laws governing free blacks (Richmond’s old laws had even regulated the carrying of canes). These codes propounded segregation, banned intermarriage, provided for special punishments for blacks, and, in one state, Mississippi, also prevented the ownership of land. Not even a congressional civil rights bill, passed over Johnson’s veto, could undo them. For their part, the Northern states were little better. During Reconstruction, employing a deadly brew of poll taxes, literacy requirements, and property qualifications, they abridged the right to vote more extensively than did their Southern counterparts.”
― Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“I’m living an “a-ticket” dream. That’s the ticket you would need back then for something lame, like riding the trolley, walking through the staircases of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, or sitting in the theater to watch an Abraham Lincoln robot put you to sleep. Four snores and seven years ago.”
― GLEN NESBITT, SUS: Short Unpredictable Stories

“Even Lincoln started off as a backboneless traditionalist, who was prepared to do whatever it takes to save the union. But in time he corrected himself, and became an ally of abolition.

If you cannot be an activist, be an ally. If you cannot be an ally, be silent. There is always something you can do, if not, try not to be an inhuman burden.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“As Harvard professor Elaine Scarry reminds us, "The prohibition on assassination in international law traces back to a forceful denunciation of the practice by Abraham Lincoln, who condemned the call for assassination as 'international outlawry' in 1863, an 'outrage' which 'civilized nations view with horror' and that merits the 'sternest retaliation'. We've come a long way since then.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?

“Who is this Abraham Lincoln?" I asked Dalmacio.

"He was a poor boy who became a president of the United States," he said. "He was born in a log cabin and walked miles and miles to borrow a book so that he would know more about his country."

A poor boy became a president of the United States! Deep down in me something was touched, was springing out, demanding to be born, to be given a name. I was fascinated by the story of this boy who was born in a log cabin and became a president of the United States.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Lincoln was a poor boy who became a president of the United States."

"I know that already," I said. "Tell me what he did when he became president."

"Well, when he became president he said that all men are created equal," Miss Strandon said. "But some men, vicious men, who had Negro slaves, did not like what he said. So a terrible war was fought between the states of the United States, and the slaves were freed and the nation was preserved. But one night he was murdered by an assassin...."

"Why?" I asked.

"Why? she said. "He was a great man."

"What is a Negro?" I asked.

"A Negro is a black person," she said.

"Abraham Lincoln died for a black person?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "He was a great man.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“City of memorials Mute
white façades

granite, pantomiming
loss

After the bomb, they'll all
vanish. Gone

Lincoln's
marble hands

that drape

colossal armrests. Missing
chiseled wave of hair

laid across

his forehead
We

cannot hallow

this ground
the new
absence

might, like Lincoln
say

Or, perhaps

Begin

again”
― Ailish Hopper, Dark~Sky Society

“According to Historian John Hope Franklin, Negro colonization seemed as important to Lincoln as emancipation. In 1862, Franklin notes, Lincoln called a group of prominent free Negroes to the White House and urged them to support colonization, telling them: “Your race suffers greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. If this is admitted, it affords a reason why we should be separated.”

In spite of his unquestioned greatness, Abraham Lincoln was a man of his times and limited by some of the less worthy thinking of his times. This is demonstrated both by his reliance upon the concept of race in his analysis of the American dilemma and by his involvement in a plan of purging the nation of blacks as a means of healing the badly shattered ideals of democratic federalism. Although benign, his motive was no less a product of fantasy. It envisaged an attempt to relieve an inevitable suffering that marked the growing pains of the youthful body politic by an operation which would have amounted to the severing of a healthy and indispensable member.”
― Ralph Ellison