Lincoln As President Quotes & Sayings

James M. McPherson spoke for a later generation of scholars when he asserted in 1988 that Lincoln's entire, public inaugural journey might have been a "mistake," because in his effort to avoid "a careless remark or slip of the tongue" that might "inflame the crisis further," the president-elect "indulged in platitudes and trivia," producing "an unfavorable impression on those who were already disposed to regard the ungainly president-elect as a commonplace prairie lawyer. — Harold Holzer

Senator [Stephen] Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. — Abraham Lincoln

Let's assume for the moment that the logic behind Presidents Day is actually sound for certain presidents. Why not have a separate holiday for Lincoln and one for Washington - as we used to do, before we became so concerned with the 'Every President Gets a Trophy' ethos? — Ben Shapiro

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. — Theodore Roosevelt

I explain to you, exactly and truly, how we are circumstanced. A greater portion of our means is unavailable, consisting of a house in S. Springfield and some wild lands in Iowa. Notwithstanding my great and good husband's life was sacrificed for his country, we are left to struggle in a manner ... of life undeserved. Roving Generals have elegant mansions showered upon them, and the American people leave the family of the Martyred President to struggle as best they may! Strange justice this. — Mary Todd Lincoln

No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer. — Jonathan Raban

In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress? — Abraham Lincoln

To the new president, Abraham Lincoln: Sir, if on attaining the presidency you are as happy as I am upon leaving it, then, sir, you are a happy man indeed. — James Buchanan

Lincoln received one more painful reminder that he was still a target for criticism. Walking between his home and office, he noticed a group of young boys teasing an agitated stray goat. When the animal hungrily spied the taller target, it turned from the children and tried butting Lincoln instead, until he was forced to seize it by the horns in self-defense. As the youngsters watched in delight, the president-elect of the United States gave his first post-election speech - to an angry goat. He might as well have been speaking to the South when he shouted: "I didn't bother you. It was the boys. Why don't you go and butt the boys. I wouldn't trouble you. — Harold Holzer

President Obama knows that wars are not to be entered into lightly; he knows that overseas conflicts don't only do damage in the land in which they are fought, but in the land of those who fight them, as well. — Lincoln Chafee

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. . .' President Lincoln. Sam — Michael Grant

[If not re-elected in 1864] then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards. — Abraham Lincoln

In Lincoln's mind, at least as Lamon interpreted the story, "the illusion was a sign." Both the president-elect and his wife believed it meant he would not only survive his term in office, but four years later win reelection to a second one, only to die before it ended. — Harold Holzer

As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you. — Abraham Lincoln

Robert T. Lincoln, the president's eldest son, who won fame as the "Prince of Rails" during the secession winter, was the only one of his children to live to maturity. He became U.S. secretary of war, minister to Great Britain, and president of the Pullman Company following brief service on General Grant's staff at the end of the Civil War. Though frequently mentioned as a Republican candidate for president, Robert shunned electoral politics. He later brought his mother to trial in a successful effort to have her committed for insanity. Robert died an extremely wealthy man at age eighty-four in 1926. — Harold Holzer

You do not know the dishonest purposes of these men as well as I do," Douglas told Lincoln of the secessionists. "If I were president, I'd convert or hang them all within forty-eight hours. — Scott Farris

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln. — Will Rogers

Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most loved president of the United States, was also the most criticized president. Probably no politician in history had worse things said about him. Here's how the Chicago Times in 1865 evaluated Lincoln's Gettysburg Address the day after he delivered it: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances of a man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as President of the United States." Time, of course, has proved this scathing criticism wrong. 9. — John C. Maxwell

In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story - the side that reflects poorly on the government - somehow gets lost. — Richard J. Maybury

As of Election Day, Lincoln had successfully avoided not only his three opponents, but also his own running mate, Hannibal Hamlin. Republicans had nominated the Maine senator for vice president without Lincoln's knowledge, much less his consent - true to another prevailing political custom that left such choices exclusively to the delegates - in an attempt to balance the Chicago convention's choice of a Westerner for the presidency. — Harold Holzer

Lincoln failed in business. He failed as a farmer. He lost running for state legislature. He had a nervous breakdown. He was rejected for a job as a land officer. When he was finally elected to the legislature, he lost the vote to be speaker. He ran for Congress and lost. He ran for and lost a U.S. Senate seat. He ran for vice president and lost. He ran for the Senate and lost again. And, when he was finally elected president, the nation he was elected to lead broke apart. But by this time, all the activities, experiences, and people he came to know in the process helped him set a direction for that country that will stand as one of America's great legacies. — Anonymous

Since Obama has expressed admiration for the portrait of Abraham Lincoln that Doris Kearns Goodwin paints in 'Team of Rivals,' he could do the 16th president one better: He should name Hillary Clinton as his running mate in 2012. That would be both needed change and audacious. — Douglas Wilder

The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln. — Barack Obama

President Reagan, expanding on President Lincoln's phrase, referred to America as 'the last, best hope of man on Earth.' But this last, best hope is beginning to fade. — Edwin Meese

It's one of the few regrets of my presidency - that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office. — Barack Obama

But before we cue the brass section to blare "The Stars and Stripes Forever," it might be worth taking another moment of melancholy silence to mourn the thwarted reconciliation with the mother country and what might have been. Anyone who accepts the patriots' premise that all men are created equal must come to terms with the fact that the most obvious threat to equality in eighteenth-century North America was not taxation without representation but slavery. Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1776 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, a generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, "This is your Fourth of July, not mine. — Sarah Vowell

He (Abraham Lincoln) said he wanted to visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footprints of the Saviour. He was saying there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem. And with the words half spoken on his tongue, the bullet of the assassin entered the brain, and the soul of the great and good President was carried by the angels to the New Jerusalem above. — Mary Todd Lincoln

The melting pot failed to function in one crucial area. Religions and nationalities, however different, generally learned to live together, even to grow together, in America. But color was something else. Reds were murdered like wild animals. Yellows were characterized as a peril and incarcerated en masse during World War ii for no really good reason by our most liberal president. Browns have been abused as the new slave labor on farms. The blacks, who did not come here willingly, are now, more than a century after emancipation by Lincoln, still suffering a host of slave like inequalities. — Theodore Hesburgh

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

He bowed jokingly, and everyone laughed as Mrs.Anderson shook her head. "Did you even read the material?"
"of course I did."
"Who was the leader of the North?"
"Lincoln."
"No, he was the president."
"Yes, which means he was the fucking leader of everyone."
Carmine — J.M. Darhower

I soon began to dream ... I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping ... I left my bed and wandered downstairs ... There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' — Abraham Lincoln

From "boyhood up," as Lincoln once confided to his old friend Ward Hill Lamon, "my ambition was to be President. — Harold Holzer

If you are not in an environment where there is scope for your best powers and talents you can move in due time; but meanwhile you can be great where you are. Lincoln was as great when he was a backwoods lawyer as when he was President; as a backwoods lawyer he did common things in a great way, and that made him President. Had he waited until he reached Washington to begin to be — Wallace D. Wattles

Then it occurred to her (Elizabeth Keckley) that if Tad (Lincoln's son) had been a colored boy rather than the son of a president, and a teacher had found him so difficult to instruct, he would have been ridiculed as a dunce and held up as evidence of the inferiority of the entire race. Tad was bright; Elizabeth knew that well, and she was sure that with proper instruction and hard work, a glimmer of his father's genius would show in him too. But Elizabeth knew many black boys Tad's age who could read and write beautifully, and yet the myth of inferiority persisted. The unfairness of the assumptions stung. If a white child appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent. It seemed to Elizabeth that if one race should not judged by a single example, then neither should any other. — Jennifer Chiaverini

I lifted the white cloth from the white face of the man that I had worshipped as an idol-looked upon as a demi-god. Notwithstanding the violence of the death of the President, there was something beautiful as well as grandly solemn in the expression of the placid face. There lurked the sweetness and gentleness of childhood, and the stately grandeur of godlike intellect. I gazed long at the face, and turned away with tears in my eyes and a choking sensation in my throat. Ah! never was man so widely mourned before. The whole world bowed their heads in grief when Abraham Lincoln died. — Elizabeth Keckley

There was one vampire, however, who refused to leave ... who believed that the dream of a nation of immortals was still within reach - so long as Abraham Lincoln was dead. His name was John Wilkes Booth. FIG.3E - JOHN WILKES BOOTH (SEATED) POSES FOR A PORTRAIT WITH CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS IN RICHMOND, CIRCA 1863. — Seth Grahame-Smith

The President to-night has a dream:He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said:He is a very common-looking man. The President replied:The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them. — Abraham Lincoln

Historian David M. Potter pointed out in 1942 that as president-elect, Lincoln was no more than "simply a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois - a man of great undeveloped capacities and narrowly limited background. He was more fit to become President than to be President. — Harold Holzer

In my opinion, assassination theories will continue to revolve around these assassinations as they have around several other significant assassinations in American history. The assassination of President Lincoln comes to mind. — Louis Stokes

Now, I'm an apolitical person (which I realize is its own kind of misleading political posture, but I think you know what I mean). I do not have conventional political affiliations. I follow presidential elections the same way I follow the NFL playoffs: obsessively and dispassionately. But Sarah Palin was (and is) a real problem. Her nomination for vice president in 2008 represents the most desperate inclinations of the Republican Party. In two hundred years, I suspect historians will use Palin as an example of how insane America became in the decade following the destruction of the World Trade Center, and her origin story will seem as extraterrestrial and eccentric as Abe Lincoln jumping out of a window to undermine a voting quorum in 1840. — Chuck Klosterman

I walked out of Spielberg's 'Lincoln' having such a thirst for more. It used such a microscopic albeit enormous event in American history. It used such a small piece of his presidency to illustrate him as a president through the lens of that event. — Jesse Johnson

We should honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt today as the greatest commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the United States in our history, bar none - including President Lincoln. — Nigel Hamilton

Lincoln may have shown how relieved he was that there had been none of the "outrage and violence" some had predicted in New York when a giant of a man neared him, and someone in the crowd cried out, "That's Tom Hyer," the retired prizefighter who had won fame with a 101-round victory years before. To which the president-elect replied, to much laughter: "I don't care, so long as he don't hit me. — Harold Holzer