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
Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Worry
You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Responsibility, Future
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.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Reality, Dogs, Rationality
Senator Stephen Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, landoffices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.
—Abraham Lincoln
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.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Goals, Judging, Judges, Judgment, Planning
Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.
—Abraham Lincoln
I dream of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Dreams
My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Money
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Faces, Face
Laws change; people die; the land remains.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: One liners, Service, Wilderness, Miscellaneous
To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all; but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Vision, Sin, Belief, Believe
He said that he felt like the boy that stumped his toe, it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.
—Abraham Lincoln
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
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Happiness, Confidence, Attitude, Joy, Self-reliance, Feelings
I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Dedication, Commitment, Realistic Expectations
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Defense
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
—Abraham Lincoln
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the? work—who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?—now—when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the victory is sure to come.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Battle, Government
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
—Abraham Lincoln
Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Truth, Government, Wisdom
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Common Sense, Acceptance
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Liberty, Equality
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Democracy, Conviction
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
—Abraham Lincoln
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Friendship, Enemies
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Enemies, Peace, Friendship, Yin, Friend, Friends
I know that the LORD is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the LORDS side.
—Abraham Lincoln
If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.
—Abraham Lincoln
As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Labor
Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Attitude, Failure, Worry
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