Top 500 Abraham Lincoln Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional – I think differently.”

— Abraham Lincoln

302. “I believe I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.”

— Abraham Lincoln

303. “Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.”

— Abraham Lincoln

304. “If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.”

— Abraham Lincoln

305. “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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

306. “One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.”

— Abraham Lincoln

307. “If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.”

— Abraham Lincoln

308. “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”

— Abraham Lincoln

309. “These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.”

— Abraham Lincoln

310. “We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

311. “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”

— Abraham Lincoln

312. “Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling.”

— Abraham Lincoln

313. “Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”

— Abraham Lincoln

314. “Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.”

— Abraham Lincoln

315. “But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.”

— Abraham Lincoln

316. “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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

317. “Why don’t I drink from a straw? Because straws are for suckers.”

— Abraham Lincoln

318. “During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals!”

— Abraham Lincoln

319. “Let us renew our trust in god, and go forward without fear.”

— Abraham Lincoln

320. “You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.”

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Abraham Lincoln

322. “He who sees cruelty and does nothing about it is himself cruel.”

— Abraham Lincoln

323. “Work, work, work, is the main thing.”

— Abraham Lincoln

324. “I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.”

— Abraham Lincoln

325. “The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.”

— Abraham Lincoln

326. “Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.”

— Abraham Lincoln

327. “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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

328. “I will either be America’s greatest president or its last.”

— Abraham Lincoln

329. “When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.”

— Abraham Lincoln

330. “Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree and can never be reversed.”

— Abraham Lincoln

331. “Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.”

— Abraham Lincoln

332. “As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man.”

— Abraham Lincoln

333. “For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country’s cause. The highest merit, then is due to the soldier.”

— Abraham Lincoln

334. “IF you are going to fight, don’t let them talk you into negotiating. But, if you are going to negotiate, don’t let them talk you into fighting.”

— Abraham Lincoln

335. “The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.”

— Abraham Lincoln

336. “We can succeed only by concert. It is not ’can any of us imagine better?, but ’can we all do better?”

— Abraham Lincoln

337. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

338. “Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms.”

— Abraham Lincoln

339. “With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”

— Abraham Lincoln

340. “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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

341. “If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.”

— Abraham Lincoln

342. “When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.”

— Abraham Lincoln

343. “Why don’t you laugh? If I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

— Abraham Lincoln

344. “Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”

— Abraham Lincoln

345. “I couldn’t be two faced. If I had two faces, I wouldn’t wear this one.”

— Abraham Lincoln

346. “I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do or not do any particular thing, He finds a way of letting me know it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

347. “No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.”

— Abraham Lincoln

348. “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”

— Abraham Lincoln

349. “Never stir up litigation, a worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this, who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket?”

— Abraham Lincoln

350. “Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.”

— Abraham Lincoln