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.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
- America
“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
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
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
- America
As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.”
Letter to Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)
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 an 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.
Speech at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858)
- America
- Race
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.
The Gettysburg Address (1863)
- America
- Liberty
In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.
Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress (1862)

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