The quotations of

Abraham Lincoln

President of the United States from 1861 to 1865

1809–1865

69 quotes, most often on Slavery, America and War & Peace. Part of the U.S. Presidents collection.

My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I…fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.
- Love
- Marriage
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
The Lyceum Address (1838)
- Genius
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. W. T. Roche, address at Washington, Kansas, April 9, 1942: “These words were spoken by Lincoln, then a Congressman, in defense of his condemnation of President Polk for provoking the Mexican War.” Congressional Record
- Government
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
- America
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
- Time
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
“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.
A House Divided (1858)
- America
- Slavery
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861)
- America
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
Letter to Edwin Stanton (14 July 1864); published in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John Hay
- Truth & Lies
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.
The Lyceum Address (1838)
- America
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
Upon proclaiming a National Fast Day (30 March 1863)
- Prayer
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
- Prayer
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
- Ideas
- Reading
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
To the South Carolina Commissioners.
- Presidency

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