Quotes from Abraham Lincoln

Labor is the true standard of value.

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

This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.

The working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous.

And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor - where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.

If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

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

All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

You know you've reached middle age when all you exercise is caution

With malice towards none; with charity for all.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better,' but, 'Can we all do better?'

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - 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.

I was raised to farm work.

The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point.

We must work earnestly in the best light He gives us.

If you intend to go to work there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you can not get along anywhere.

I am always for the man who wishes to work.

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.

The best way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends.

One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.