Abraham Lincoln

Bekannte Zitate von Abraham Lincoln

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

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

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

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

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.

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

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

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

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

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.

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.

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

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

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

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

I never had a policy I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

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

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

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

Lets have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.