50 Best Abraham Lincoln Quotes

• In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
• Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
• All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
• No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
• The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
• Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
• The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
• Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
• 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.
• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
• 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.
• Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
• 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.
• No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
• 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.
• Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
• Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
• When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
• 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.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
• I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
• 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.
• 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 do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
• 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.
• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
• If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
• I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
• A house divided against itself cannot stand.
• I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
• Everybody likes a compliment.
• The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
• The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
• 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.
• We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
• 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.
• 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.
• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
• 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.
• My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
• My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.