Abraham Lincoln Men Quotations [Page 2]

Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.

Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.

Next to creating a life the finest thing a man can do is save one.

There is no greater injustice than to wring your profits from the sweat of another man's brow.

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man.

I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mouths only and no hands, and if he had ever made another class that he intended should do all the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths and with all hands.

Young man, if God gives me four years more to rule this country, I believe it will become what it ought to be-what its Divine Author intended it to be-no longer one vast plantation for breeding human beings for the purpose of lust and bondage. But it will become a new Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the nations of the earth will assemble together under one flag, worshipping a common God, and they will celebrate the resurrection of human freedom.

You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry

You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak

Every man is born an original, but sadly, most men die copies.

All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.

The leading rule for a man of every calling is diligence; never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

...Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in and inferior position...Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.

As long as the Almighty permitted intelligent men, created in his image and likeness, to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on approvingly, it's not for me to deprive the chickens of the same privilege.

As we keep or break the Sabbath Day we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature-oppositi on to it is in his love of justice.

I am always for the man who wishes to work.

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent.

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.

Next came the patent laws. These began in England in 1624, and in this country with the adoption of our Constitution. Before then any man [might] instantly use what another man 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 exclusive use of his inventions, and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.

If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.

Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed. They always have been, they always will be beaten.

Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself ... are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.

There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.

While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election; and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy.

It is the man who does not want to express an opinion whose opinion I want.

Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed.

No man ever got lost on a straight road.

In order to win a man to your cause, you must first reach his heart, the great high road to his reason.

There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.

It is easiest to "be all things to all men," but it is not honest. Self-respect must be sacrificed every hour in the day.

I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League, have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.

Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.

A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.

I think I stand where that man stands.

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.

We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.

I am a patient man--always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do, but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.

Well, I suppose you know that men will stand a good deal when they are flattered.

Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.

I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.

Of our political revolution of '76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

Peace will come soon to stay, and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure their cases and pay the costs.

If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal,' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

While I have often said that all men out to be free, yet I would allow those colored persons to be slaves who want to be; and next to them those white persons who argue in favor of making other people slaves. I am in favor of giving an opportunity to such white men to try it on for themselves.

All men are created equal, except Negroes.

The land, the earth God gave to man for his home ... should never be the possession of any man, corporation, (or) society ... any more than the air or water.

All things desirable to men are contained in the Bible.

Every man has a right to be equal with every other man.

Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail... A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.

Great men are ordinary men with extra ordinary determination.

Don't judge a man by the size of his ego or his heart, but on the epicness of his beard and the beautiful woman on his arm

If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

It is better then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it - keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it; for as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.

What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea-coasts, our army and our navy. ... Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. ... you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.

The only security a man can ever have is the ability to do a job uncommonly well.

Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief -- resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.

Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men

My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could do for themselves.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces

I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

In times like these men should utter nothing for which they would not be willingly responsible through time and in eternity.

I then thought him one of the most diffident and worst plagued men I ever saw.