Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was the 16th president of the United States 1861–65 and one of the most illustrious American leaders in history. His tenure as president was dominated by the monumental American Civil War, during which he played a pivotal role in preserving the Union and accomplishing the emancipation of enslaved individuals across the nation.

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

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Thinking

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition… I have no other so great as that of being truely esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Aspirations, Ambition, Goals, Motivation

Good things come to those who wait, but they are left-overs from those who hustle.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Government, Persistence, Action, Defects, Possessions, Procrastination

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

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

Be sure your feet are in the right place. Then stand firm.
—Abraham Lincoln

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his true friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the greatest highroad to his reason, and which when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if, indeed, that cause be really a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to make him as one to be shunned or despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Friendship, Reason, Sincerity, Friends

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
—Abraham Lincoln

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselvesin their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere. The desirable things which the individuals of a people can not do, or can not well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those which have relation to wrongs, and those which have not. Each of these branch off into an infinite variety of subdivisions. The firstthat in relation to wrongsembraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and nonperformance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself. From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need for government.
—Abraham Lincoln

Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Face, Integrity, Faces

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 probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Justice, Mistakes, Failures, Failure

Singular indeed that the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint.
—Abraham Lincoln

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Conservatives, Politics

As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow fromso must it be with a government.
—Abraham Lincoln

I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Danger

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
—Abraham Lincoln

Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Time

I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Marriage

God must have loved the plain people: He made so many of them.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: People

To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
—Abraham Lincoln

If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.
—Abraham Lincoln

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meannesses for the public good.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Politics

Every person is responsible for his own looks after 40.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Appearance

Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Opinions

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Humor

Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Society

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: Hypocrisy, Justice, Crime, Criminals

Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to himBlondin, stand up a little straighterBlondin, stoop a little morego a little fasterlean a little more to the northlean a little more to the south? No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don’t badger them. Keep silence, and well get you safe across.
—Abraham Lincoln

I cannot imagine anyone looking at the sky and denying God.
—Abraham Lincoln
Topics: Nature

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