Sourced and curated.

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1865

★ 9.3

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.

1863

★ 9.2

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field 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.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 9.0

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not 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.

Gettysburg Address · 1863

★ 8.6

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1865

★ 7.2

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. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1865

★ 7.1

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.

1858

★ 7.0

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.

1838

★ 7.0

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away."

1859

★ 6.2

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

1856

★ 5.5

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 5.5

Letter · Political speech

1864

★ 5.5

If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.

1854

★ 5.5

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.

1860

★ 5.5

Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.

I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

1862

★ 5.5

Political literature

Emancipation Proclamation · 1862

★ 5.5

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1865

★ 5.5

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1865

★ 5.5

I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mouths only and no hands, and if he had ever made another class that he intended should do all the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths and with all hands.

1859

★ 5.4

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 4.6

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 4.6

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

1838

★ 3.9

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

1865

★ 3.9

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature—opposition to it, is [in?] his love of justice.

1854

★ 3.8

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

1855

★ 3.8

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 their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 3.8

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual... Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever - it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 3.8

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

A man who denies to other men equality of rights is hardly worthy of freedom; but I would give even to him all the rights which I claim for myself.

1864

★ 3.8

1906

★ 3.8

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.

1837

★ 3.7

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.

1848

★ 3.7

I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.

1854

★ 3.7

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.

1858

★ 3.7

To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.

1859

★ 3.7

I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.

Yet in all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.

1860

★ 3.7

Political speech

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. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.

1860

★ 3.7

Political literature

Annual Message to Congress · 1861

★ 3.7

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.

1862

★ 3.7

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.

1862

★ 3.7

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, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

Second Annual Message to Congress · 1862

★ 2.9

Political debate

Lincoln-Douglas Debates · 1858

★ 2.3

The intention of the lawgiver is the law.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 2.3

No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent.

1854

★ 2.2

Public opinion in this country is everything.

Do good to those who hate you and turn their ill will to friendship.

1859

★ 2.2

1865

★ 2.2

The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

1839

★ 2.1

Political debate

Lincoln-Douglas Debates · 1858

★ 2.1

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

1860

★ 2.1

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 2.1

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 2.1

If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

1861

★ 2.1

I went into the neighborhood in that State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried, and from which I had been absent about fifteen years. That part of the country is, within itself, as unpoetical as any spot of the earth; but still, seeing it and its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry; though whether my expression of those feelings is poetry is quite another question.

1846

★ 2.0

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

1848

★ 2.0

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

1854

★ 2.0

This government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and…slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the State.

1858

★ 2.0

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

1859

★ 2.0

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destory slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.

1862

★ 2.0

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow citizens wherever they may then be as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to Almighty God the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do farther recommend to my fellow citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of events for a turn of the inestimable blessings of Peace, Union and Harmony throughout the land, which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

1864

★ 2.0

Political speech

1864

★ 2.0

Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father's.

It is very strange that I, a boy brought up in the woods, and seeing, as it were, but little of the world, should be drifted into the very apex of this great event.

1864

★ 2.0

Interview · Newspaper

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll...it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and desert and chasm that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp...what's the use of knowing True North?

1864

★ 2.0

Film · Biography (film) · Historical drama (film) · Biography · Historical drama

Lincoln · 2012

★ 1.9

He never lets the logic of principle, displace the logic of success.

1859

★ 1.3

Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father and to tear the character of his own and his children's liberty.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

1838

★ 1.2

1850

★ 1.2

If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extention—its enlargement.