1
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Abraham Lincolnverified·Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois·February 22, 1842
16th president · 1861–1865
Abraham Lincoln
21 quotes, oldest first. Every one links to the speech, message or opinion it came from.
2
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
Abraham Lincolnverified·Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois·February 22, 1842
3
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests.
Abraham Lincolnverified·Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois·February 22, 1842
4
The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.
5
Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.
6
Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.
7
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
8
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.
9
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.
10
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
11
On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.
12
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result.
13
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively.
14
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.
15
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.
16
His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.
17
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?
18
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
19
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth
Abraham Lincolnverified·Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery·November 19, 1863
20
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in
21
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time
Attribution contested
No contemporaneous record of Lincoln saying this survives. It first appears in recollections published decades after his death, and has also been credited to P. T. Barnum. Even the wording is unstable: this is McClure's 1901 text, which differs from the version usually quoted today. Treat the phrasing as the compiler's, not Lincoln's.