Top 500 Abraham Lincoln Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “I was raised to farm work.”

— Abraham Lincoln

352. “Killing the dog does not cure the bite.”

— Abraham Lincoln

353. “Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”

— Abraham Lincoln

354. “To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.”

— Abraham Lincoln

355. “I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.”

— Abraham Lincoln

356. “I hold that while a man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.”

— Abraham Lincoln

357. “We shall meanly lose or nobly save the last hope of earth.”

— Abraham Lincoln

358. “Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.”

— Abraham Lincoln

359. “Government, possessing the power to create and issue currency and credit as money and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as a means of financing government work and public enterprises.”

— Abraham Lincoln

360. “As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.”

— Abraham Lincoln

361. “In all that people can do for themselves, government ought not to interfere.”

— Abraham Lincoln

362. “The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.”

— Abraham Lincoln

363. “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

— Abraham Lincoln

364. “I have a congenital aversion to failure.”

— Abraham Lincoln

365. “When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.”

— Abraham Lincoln

366. “The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.”

— Abraham Lincoln

367. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

— Abraham Lincoln

368. “When you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.”

— Abraham Lincoln

369. “Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.”

— Abraham Lincoln

370. “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.”

— Abraham Lincoln

371. “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

372. “Four score and seven days is too long between massages.”

— Abraham Lincoln

373. “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free...”

— Abraham Lincoln

374. “Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there.”

— Abraham Lincoln

375. “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

— Abraham Lincoln

376. “Don’t judge a man by the size of his ego or his heart, but on the epicness of his beard and the beautiful woman on his arm.”

— Abraham Lincoln

377. “Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.”

— Abraham Lincoln

378. “He will have to learn, I know, that all people are not just- that all men and women are not true. Teach him that for every scoundrel there is a hero that for every enemy there is a friend. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest people to lick.”

— Abraham Lincoln

379. “As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.”

— Abraham Lincoln

380. “The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

— Abraham Lincoln

381. “I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.”

— Abraham Lincoln

382. “The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle.”

— Abraham Lincoln

383. “What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.”

— Abraham Lincoln

384. “No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.”

— Abraham Lincoln

385. “If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to bevery much chagrined.”

— Abraham Lincoln

386. “Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.”

— Abraham Lincoln

387. “Lamon, that speech won’t scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.”

— Abraham Lincoln

388. “A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

— Abraham Lincoln

389. “All that harms labor is treason to America.”

— Abraham Lincoln

390. “And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.”

— Abraham Lincoln

391. “Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good.”

— Abraham Lincoln

392. “Fondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”

— Abraham Lincoln

393. “All the armies of Europe combined could not by force make a track upon the Blue Ridge, or take a drink from the Ohio. If we are to be destroyed, we must do it ourselves.”

— Abraham Lincoln

394. “Bring me Longstreet’s head on a platter and the war will be over.”

— Abraham Lincoln

395. “The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

— Abraham Lincoln

396. “Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.”

— Abraham Lincoln

397. “You may have a wen or a cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way tocure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body.”

— Abraham Lincoln

398. “Don’t be fooled. I kept all my workout clothes in that top hat.”

— Abraham Lincoln

399. “I can’t spare this man, he fights!”

— Abraham Lincoln

400. “What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.”

— Abraham Lincoln