110 Famous Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Abraham Lincoln was a beyond doubt one of the greatest American Presidents of all time. He was a true leader and fought for equality within the US. As the 16th President of the United States, “honest Abe” served for only four short years – from March 1861 until his assassination in the April 1865. He believed in patience, hard work, perseverance, integrity, humanity and education. Lincoln strove for a democracy that was “of the people, by the people, for the people.” 

Abraham Lincoln’s dedication and vision inspired USA; and his legacy continues to shape culture today. Abe Lincoln’s wisdom words are a true inspiration and motivate all who want to strive towards living a purposeful life. He delivered some of the most memorable quotes and left behind a wealth of wisdom that sounds best even today. With that in mind, here are my favorite  Inspirational Abraham Lincoln Quotes. These quotes inspire youth in every generation and are as relevant today as they’ve ever been.

Abraham Lincoln’s inspiring quotes

1. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

2. “I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

3. “Whatever you are, be a good one.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

4. “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

5. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

6. “Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

7. “I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
8. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
9. “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” ~ Abraham Lincoln
10. “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Famous Abraham Lincoln quotes

11. “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” ~ Abraham Lincoln
12. “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
13. “You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
14. “He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
15. “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.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

16. “And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
17. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
18. “There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
19. “A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
20. “Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Memorable Abraham Lincoln quotes

21. “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln
22. “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
23. “All I have learned, I learned from books.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
24. “Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
25. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

26. “It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
27. “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
28. “Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
29. “I would rather be a little nobody, then to be an evil somebody.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
30. “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Best Abraham Lincoln quotes

31. “I will prepare and someday my chance will come.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
32. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
33. “I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
34. “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
35. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

36. “Everybody likes a compliment.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
37. “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
38. “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
39. “Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today” ~ Abraham Lincoln
40. “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln quotes

41. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free” ~ Abraham Lincoln
42. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
43. “You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
44. “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
45. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
46. “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
47. “Every person’s happiness is their own responsibility.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
48. “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
49. “You can tell the greatness of someone by what makes them angry” ~ Abraham Lincoln
50. “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Quotes and sayings by Abraham Lincoln

51. “Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
52. “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
53. “The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
54. “I am not concerned that you have fallen — I am concerned that you arise.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
55. “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

56. “I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
57. “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
58. “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.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
59. “I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
60. “Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

More Abe Lincoln quotes

61. “To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
62. “Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
63. “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
64. “Do good to those who hate you and turn their ill will to friendship.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
65. “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
66. “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
67. “Love is the chain to lock a child to its parent.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
68. “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
69. “My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
70. “Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

71. “All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
72. “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will because we destroyed ourselves.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
73. “Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
74. “No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln
75. “I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold my hands while my enemies stab me.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
76. “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the sky and say there is no God.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
77. “Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
78. “A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
79. “For people who like that kind of a book that is the kind of book they will like.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
80. “The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Inspirational Quotes

81. “I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement I have the best of the bargain.”~ Abraham Lincoln
82. “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
83. “I have a congenital aversion to failure.” ~Abraham Lincoln
84. “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
85. “The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
86. “We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety clouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
87. “Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.”~ Abraham Lincoln
88. “What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
89. “There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
90. “Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

91. “Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
92. “A new book is like a friend that I have yet to meet.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
93. “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
94. “I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
95. “If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
96. “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.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
97. “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
98. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
99. “Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
100. “In law it is a good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Best Abraham Lincoln Quotes

91. “In very truth he was, the noblest work of God—an honest man.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
92. “Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
93. “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
94. “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
95. “Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
96. “If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
97. “I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
98. “What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?” ~ Abraham Lincoln
99. “I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
100. “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

What are your favorite Abraham Lincoln Quotes?

Over to you now, which Abraham Lincoln Quote is your favorite? What other quotes of Abe Lincoln would you add to the list? Please feel free to share those in the comment section.

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