ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUOTES IV

U.S. President (1809-1865)

Abraham Lincoln quote

All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, July 17, 1858


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.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 22, 1855


The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fragment of a speech from July 1, 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

Tags: government


It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

attributed, The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln

Tags: vice


If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, June 16, 1858


On my return from Philadelphia, yesterday, where, in my anxiety I had been led to attend the whig convention, I found your last letter. I was so tired and sleepy, having ridden all night, that I could not answer it till today; and now I have to do so in the H. R. The leading matter in your letter, is your wish to return to the side of the mountains. Will you be a good girl in all things, if I consent? Then come along, and that as soon as possible. Having got the idea in my head, I shall be impatient till I see you.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to his wife, June 12, 1848


I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858

Tags: slavery


If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. Why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fragment of a speech from 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

Tags: slavery


And you are entirely free from head-ache? That is good -- good -- considering it is the first spring you have been free from it since we were acquainted. I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young, as to be wanting to marry again.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to his wife, April 16, 1848


Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor--let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. While ever a state of feeling such as this shall universally or even very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838


In law it is a good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to Usher F. Linder, February 20, 1848


For several years past the revenues of the government have been unequal to its expenditures, and consequently loan after loan, sometimes direct and sometimes indirect in form, has been resorted to. By this means a new national debt has been created, and is still growing on us with a rapidity fearful to contemplate--a rapidity only reasonably to be expected in a time of war. This state of things has been produced by a prevailing unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to direct taxation. But the one or the other must come. Coming expenditures must be met, and the present debt must be paid; and money cannot always be borrowed for these objects. The system of loans is but temporary in its nature, and must soon explode. It is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us destitute. As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and, next, no one left to borrow from, so must it be with a government. We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax, must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is now denied by no one.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Whig circular, 1843

Tags: national debt


The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854


In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to expect it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862

Tags: sorrow


Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful. The slave-master himself has a conception of it; and hence the system of tasks among slaves. The slave whom you can not drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and promise him pay for all he does over, he will break you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope, for the rod. And yet perhaps it does not occur to you, that to the extent of your gain in the case, you have given up the slave system, and adopted the free system of labor.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fragmentary manuscript of a speech on free labor, September 17, 1859?

Tags: hope


And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that Judge Douglas, and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his fast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858


What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858

Tags: liberty


These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech to Illinois legislature, Sangamo Journal, January 28, 1837

Tags: capitalism


The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, none who would do more to preserve it, but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, February 21, 1861

Tags: peace


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

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854