Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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A house divided against it cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.
. . . 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, thenceforward, and forever free; . . .

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
I am not concerned that you have fallen; I am concerned that you arise.
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
If General McClellan isn’t going to use his army, I’d like to borrow it for a time.
I want every man to have the chance – and I believe a black man is entitled to it – in which he can better his condition, when he may look forward and hope to be a hired labourer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system.

They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
Whatever you are, be a good one.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.