Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.

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

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.

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

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

Achievement has no color

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.

I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

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

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

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

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

Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.

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, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Don't criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.