Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was the 16th president of the United States 1861–65 and one of the great American leaders. The American Civil War dominated his presidency.
Not much is known about the early life of Lincoln. He was born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky. His family was poor, and Lincoln lost his mother at nine, completed just one year of traditional schooling, spent his youth in Indiana, and did manual labor until he was 21.
Lincoln pursued self-education by reading books on grammar and rhetoric and joined a debating society. At age 27, after years of private study of law, he obtained a license to practice and eventually became one of Illinois’s ablest lawyers. Lincoln also worked his way through the Illinois State Legislature and got elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He gained popularity for his down-to-earth wit, integrity, and opposition to the institution of slavery.
Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War held the country together through the worst moral, constitutional, and political crisis in its history. On 9-April-1865, the Confederate general Robert E Lee surrendered and ending the war. It had lasted for more than four years, and 600,000 Americans had died. Six days later, Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. and died the next morning. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a strong supporter of the Confederacy.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is celebrated for its reaffirmation of a founding principle of the United States: that all humans are born equal.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Abraham Lincoln
Sorrow comes to all…Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better and yet you are sure to be happy again.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Sorrow
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Attitude, Goals, Determination, Belief
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Character
Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?
—Abraham Lincoln
Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: The Military
The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Truth
My friends I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Liberty, Government, Democracy
We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Christianity, Peace
He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Justice, Hypocrisy, Criminals, Crime
I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Progress, Endurance, Integrity, Perseverance, Persistence, Resolve
I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
—Abraham Lincoln
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. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Doing Your Best, Critics, Best, Posterity, Criticism
Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then these?, any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.
—Abraham Lincoln
It is my ambition and desire to so administer the affairs of the government while I remain President that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend remaining and that one shall be down inside me.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Character, Hypocrisy, Friendship
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Popularity
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Enemies
A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Fear
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: War
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Events
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Law
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Integrity, Feelings, Goodness
This extraordinary war in which we are engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people, but the most heavily upon the soldier. For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his countrys cause. The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier.
—Abraham Lincoln
Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Freedom
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Face, Faces
Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.
—Abraham Lincoln
Every person is responsible for his own looks after 40.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Appearance
Towering genius disdains a beaten path … It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Genius
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Wildlife
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and loss of self control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Fighting, Fight, Quarrels
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