"You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently."
Read quote
55 likes
Quote collection
Abraham Lincoln quotes (page 7 of 58)
1.1K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."
Read quote
54 likes
"Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice."
Read quote
54 likes
"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."
Read quote
54 likes
"It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him."
Read quote
53 likes
"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!"
Read quote
53 likes
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
Read quote
53 likes
"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."
Read quote
52 likes
"I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization."
Read quote
51 likes
"In the world's history certain inventions and discoveries occurred, of peculiar value, on account of their great efficiency in facilitating all other inventions and discoveries. Of these were the art of writing and of printing - the discovery of America, and the introduction of Patent-laws. The date of the first ... is unknown; but it certainly was as much as fifteen hundred years before the Christian era; the second-printing-came in 1436, or nearly three thousand years after the first. The others followed more rapidly - the discovery of America in 1492, and the first patent laws in 1624."
Read quote
51 likes
"Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things."
Read quote
51 likes
"I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that 'while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the Acts of Congress.' If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it."
Read quote
51 likes
"I never tire of reading Tom Paine."
Read quote
51 likes
"Nothing in this world is impossible to a willing heart."
Read quote
50 likes
"Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day."
Read quote
50 likes
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
Read quote
50 likes
"History is not history unless it is the truth."
Read quote
49 likes
"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer."
Read quote
47 likes
"Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both."
Read quote
46 likes
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
Read quote
44 likes