Abraham Lincoln
16th president of the United States (1809 to 1865), in office from 1861 to 1865.
Abraham Lincoln did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
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Their wordsBoth parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 5th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThese slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 6th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsWith 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.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 7th of 7 in this piece
- 15 months earlier
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Their wordsIt is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that 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, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 4th of 7 in this piece
- 4 years earlier
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Their wordsI do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience-to reject all progress, all improvement.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 1st of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsAs those fathers marked it, so let it again be marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 2nd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsLet 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.
↗Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 (ed. Merwin Roe, 1907)gutenberg.org 3rd of 7 in this piece
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