Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man

for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of,

and scoffer at, religion.

I learned a great many years ago

that in a fight between husband and wife,

a third party should never get between

the woman's skillet and the man's ax helve.

I have always been an old

line Henry Clay Whig.

It is with your aid, as the people,

that I think we shall be able to preserve

not the country, for the country will preserve itself,

but the institutions of the country

those institutions which have made us free,

intelligent and happy the most free, the most intelligent,

and the happiest people on the globe.

If I like a thing,

it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for

the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact.

When it is said that the institution exists,

and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way,

I can understand and appreciate the saying.

If there should prove to be one real,

living Free State Democrat in Kansas,

I suggest that it might be well to catch him and stuff

and preserve his skin as an interesting specimen of

that soon to be extinct variety of the genus Democrat.

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.

If a man had more than one life,

I think a little hanging would not hurt this one;

but after he is once dead,

we cannot bring him back,

no matter how sorry we may be;

so the boy shall be pardoned.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing

off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you.

It is different with us.

Here it is every fellow for himself,

or he doesn't get there.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent,

and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

By what principle of original right is it that one

fiftieth or one

ninetieth of a great nation,

by calling themselves a State,

have the right to break up and ruin that nation

as a matter of original principle?

I have said a hundred times,

and I have no inclination to take it back,

that I believe there is no right,

and ought to be no inclination in the people

of the free States to enter into the slave States,

and to interfere with the question of slavery at all.

I have said that always.

Let the people on both sides keep their self possession,

and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time,

so will this,

and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major general.

I was born and have ever remained in

the most humble walks of life.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government,

who assist in bearing its burdens.

Consequently,

I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage,

who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

For my part, I desire to see the time when education

and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry

shall become much more general than at present,

and should be gratified to have it in my power

to contribute something to the advancement of

any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate

the happy period.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward,

and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

Some day I shall be President.