The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

My Favorite Quotes of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, the country's greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.

He has many quotes that are apropos to the America of today. However, any list of quotations must begin with his ‘Gettysburg Address’, which succinctly summarized the meaning of the Civil War:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - 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 - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
 - Abraham Lincoln – The Gettysburg Address

The following are quotes by Abraham Lincoln that I keep in mind when writing my Chirps and Articles:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

"Citizens, seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose."
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“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.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four, calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
 -  Abraham Lincoln

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“Whenever this question will be settled" Abraham Lincoln said of the question of slavery in New Haven, Connecticut on March 6, 1860, "it must be settled on some philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
 - Abraham Lincoln

“You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
- Abraham Lincoln

For additional quotes of Abraham Lincoln, I would recommend the website ‘Selected Quotations by Abraham Lincoln”.