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A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.

—  Abraham Lincoln

To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I have never had a policy. I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

—  Abraham Lincoln

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

—  Abraham Lincoln

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. 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.

—  Abraham Lincoln

To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Property is the fruit of labor ... property is desirable ... is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

—  Abraham Lincoln

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends?

—  Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried upon him personally.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

—  Abraham Lincoln

Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.

—  Abraham Lincoln

A jury too often has at least one member who is more ready to hang the panel than the traitor.

—  Abraham Lincoln

A woman is the only thing that I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I have always believed that a good laugh was good for both the mental and physical digestion.

—  Abraham Lincoln

A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.

—  Abraham Lincoln

In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

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; it shall not deter me.

—  Abraham Lincoln

What has once happened, will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way.

—  Abraham Lincoln

When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run.

—  Abraham Lincoln

As the problems are new, we must disenthrall ourselves from the past.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.

—  Abraham Lincoln

We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I think that God means that we shall do more than we have yet done in furtherance of his plans and he will open the way for our doing it.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives and to so live that the place he lives is proud of him.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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.

—  Abraham Lincoln

To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards of men.

—  Abraham Lincoln

After a man reaches forty, he is responsible for his face.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Upon the North gaining control of the Mississippi River: The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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.

—  Abraham Lincoln

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

—  Abraham Lincoln

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe fruit at length falls into his lap.

—  Abraham Lincoln

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.

—  Abraham Lincoln

So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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 battlefield 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.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

—  Abraham Lincoln

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side, My great concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.

—  Abraham Lincoln

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.

—  Abraham Lincoln

We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I do not think much of a man who does not know more today than he did yesterday.

—  Abraham Lincoln

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it'.

—  Abraham Lincoln

He who does something at the head of one regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.

—  Abraham Lincoln

... I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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.

—  Abraham Lincoln

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

—  Abraham Lincoln

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

—  Abraham Lincoln

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Liquor may have its defenders, but it has no defense.

—  Abraham Lincoln

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

—  Abraham Lincoln

As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

—  Abraham Lincoln

I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

—  Abraham Lincoln

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

—  Abraham Lincoln

I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is; the tree is the real thing.

—  Abraham Lincoln