Abraham Lincoln Said It

Quotations from Abraham Lincoln

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated.

July 1, 1850: Notes for a Law Lecture

It is said by some, that men will think and act for themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else, merely because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine this. Let me ask the man who would maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, I'll venture. And why not? There would be nothing irreligious in it: nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. Then why not? It is not because there would be something egregiously unfashionable i n it? Then it is the influence of fashion; and what is the influence of fashion, but the influence that other people's actions have [on our own]?

February 22, 1842: Temperence Address delivered before the Springfield Washington Temperance Society in the Second Presbyterian Church [Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 277]

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.

March 6, 1860: Speech at New Haven, CT

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

March 4, 1865: Second Inaugural Address

I personally wish Jacob R. Freese, of New-Jersey, to be appointed a Colonel for a colored regiment--and this regardless of whether he can tell the exact shade of Julius Caesar's hair.

- Letter to Edwin M. Stanton, November 11, 1863

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom

November 19, 1863: Gettysburg Address

I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.

November 20, 1863: Letter to Edward Everett regarding Everett's praise of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

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, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

March 4, 1865: Second Inaugural Address

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our household. ...He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working men in every department of industry with abundant rewards.

October 20 , 1864: Proclamation of Thanksgiving [Collected Works, Vol. VIII, p. 55]