Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1965)

16th President of the United States

• Gettysburg Address
• House Divided
• 1st Inaugural
• 2nd Inaugural
• Final Speech

Famous Quotes

"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."  

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

"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."  

"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."

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

"A house divided against itself 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."

"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."

"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."

"Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today."

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

"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. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

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

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