Lincoln's Quotes & Sayings

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

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. — Maria Semple

One of the things that you learn, having been in this [President's] office for four years, is the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's. That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done. — Barack Obama

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

These days I love to take in the sunset because every time I do so I remember how lucky I am to be alive. That's a great relationship to have with the setting sun. — Lincoln Hall

Mixed with this frustration was the suspicion that Northern lives were being wasted because of mismanagement and political meddling, a suspicion reinforced by Lincoln's firing of McClellan, who, despite his poor showing in the field, was widely respected as a military professional. These are the views reflected in Holmes's letter. They were Copperhead views, but one did not need to be a Democrat in the fall of 1862 to share them. — Louis Menand

The (campaign) ads all have the same tone - the voice is hushed and amazed when talking about The Enemy, as if you should worry how this amoral, power-mad, extremist puppy-strangler clawed his way out of hell and landed in your district. And the voice is happy and relieved when talking about The Most Noble Candidate, as though he's Santa, Will Rogers and Lincoln all rolled into one. — James Lileks

Converting the war into an antislavery crusade was a brilliant move on Lincoln's part, and it resulted in a surge of voluntary recruits into the Union army. But this did not last. Northerners may have disapproved of slavery in the South but, once the bloodletting began in earnest, their willingness to die for that conviction began to wane. [ ... ] Lincoln faced the embarrassing reality that he soon would have no army to carry on the crusade. — G. Edward Griffin

Only a crazy man would write a novel in Lincoln's voice. — Jerome Charyn

One hundred thirty years after Abe Lincoln, re Republicans have got the anti-black vote and it's bigger than any Democratic Presidential candidate can cope with. — John Updike

Spending and tax cut decisions must be both fiscally responsible and fair to our working families. I believe that fiscal responsibility is the way to create prosperity for America and secure the retirement of America's seniors. — Blanche Lincoln

There is no greater injustice than to wring your profits from the sweat of another man's brow. — Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Chafee, former governor of Rhode Island, announced he's running for president. Before he announced he's running, his wife went on Facebook and asked his staff if they remembered his password. Because if a Facebook password is too hard to remember, the launch codes for the nukes should be a piece of cake. — Jimmy Fallon

About the Story

Not all the details in this story are true. The times some events occurred have been changed, and the conversations are made up. Most of the things Tad Lincoln did in this story reportedly happened, including saving Jack the turkey and bombarding the Cabinet Room door with his toy cannon. Tad really was determined to raise money to help wounded soldiers and did persuade his father to pardon a woman's husband so he wouldn't be shot. Although Tad's antics often annoyed his father's staff, most agreed he had a big heart and a special way with animals. Once he even hitched goats to a chair and ran them through the White House, upsetting a gathering of dignified ladies. Nothing was too surprising when it came to Tad.
Although several presidents had declared occasional days of thanksgiving, none had ever officially made it a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln finally did so with his Proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1863. — Gary Hines

One's only security in life comes from doing something uncommonly well. — Abraham Lincoln

DARWIN'S "SACRED CAUSE"?
Much ink has been dedicated to determining Charles Darwin's role in "scientific racism." The only way to empirically and scientifically determine his role is to organize the events as a timeline, and thus placing them into context of historical events. Political analysis without historical context is all sail and no rudder. In America we are constantly made aware that both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, in the same year, February 12, 1809. Adrian Desmond and James Moore famous 2009 book, "Darwin's Sacred Cause," leverages this factoid in an effort to place Charles Darwin at par with Abraham Lincoln in the abolition of slavery. This fraudulently steals away credit from Abraham Lincoln, who took a bullet to the head for the cause, and transfers it by inference to an aristocrat whom remained in his plush abode throughout the conflict and never lifted a finger for the cause. — A.E. Samaan

Today, many people not only take the self for granted but struggle mightily to connect it to anything larger. In Lincoln's time, the idea of the self had the power - tinged with uncertainty, even with danger - of something emerging and ascending. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Reputation is like fine china: Once broken it's very hard to repair. — Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's reference to government of the people, by the people, for the people is a generally satisfactory definition of democracy. I say generally because when it comes to fair and workable details, democracy fails to completely meet the criteria enunciated by Lincoln by a rather wide margin. — George Aiken

I can not but hate the prospect of slavery's expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity. — Abraham Lincoln

News is just news until it happens to you. Then it's tragedy. — J. Lincoln Fenn

This kind of compartmentalizing - separating one's livelihood from one's social aspirations - is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It's almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other. — David Byrne

Whether it's making sure that families have access to quality health care and child care, or making sure that our children receive the best educational opportunities we can give them, we must remain committed to these needs because our children are our future. — Blanche Lincoln

As Bush said, after detailing some of Saddam Hussein's charming practices: "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." It's not as if anyone is worried that we're making a horrible miscalculation and could be removing the Iraqi Abraham Lincoln by mistake. — Ann Coulter

You can drink out of Lincoln's nose. They got the Hard Rock t-shirts. They got Elvis, too. — Suzy Bogguss

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle. — Abraham Lincoln

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. — Abraham Lincoln

Similarly, when Lincoln insisted the Civil War was about the union, not about slavery, this is understood by competent historians to reflect Lincoln's determination to keep border states - Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri - within the union. These states had slavery, and if Lincoln framed the war as one to end slavery, the border states would have seceded. If they seceded, Lincoln believed the union cause was lost. Once again, Lincoln acted in statesmanlike fashion to hold the border states, and he was successful in doing so, thus shortening the war and ending slavery more quickly. — Dinesh D'Souza

It's interesting how Obama's adorers in the press keep comparing him to Lincoln and Reagan. Apparently they can't think of a Democrat president worthy of being compared to. — Ann Coulter

I support the framework that the bipartisan group of senators are working on ... We have to remember the 11 million people who are here are people ... [i]t's what Abraham Lincoln would have said, it is what the Republican Party stands for. It is the reason we have to get it right on who stays and who goes. — Darrell Issa

What are the stars telling you?" I asked.
Max pushed up on his elbows and pretended to strain his ear toward the sky. "They say...They say...you're allowed to forgive yourself."
I rolled sideways...and he did the same.
"For what?" I asked.
"Living."
"I'm not very good at that," I admitted.
"Well, you kissed someone without flinching. Maybe you're getting better."
"Maybe it's just you."
He didn't argue. — Courtney C. Stevens

I would characterize Moonlit Nights as a mix between Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's 'The Relic' and 'Congo' by Michael Crichton. If those books had a baby and that baby was a werewolf then that would be my book! — Jacob Parr

You'll never have to fend for yourself like that, Lincoln. You never have to be alone. Why would you want to?"
He leaned back against his bedroom wall and slunk down until he was sitting on the cast-iron radiator. "I just...," he said.
"Just?"
"I need to live my life."
"You aren't living your own life now?" she asked. "I certainly never tell you what to do."
"No, I know, it's just..."
"Just?"
"It doesn't feel like I'm living my own life."
"What?"
"It feels like, as long as I stay home, I'm still living your life. like I'm still a kid."
"That's silly," she said.
"Maybe," he said. — Rainbow Rowell

Gorbachev's stance contrasts admirably with the policy of the sainted Abraham Lincoln, who used massive force and mass murder to force the seceding Southern states to remain in the Union. — Murray Rothbard

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. — Gore Vidal

The playwright's rendition of Abraham Lincoln remembers a pitiful little paddlewheel he saw that he could only generate steam to EITHER blow the ship's whistle OR move the wheel. Just as the little ship could not do both, Lincoln fears that very few can actually think and speak at the same time. — Norman Corwin

People who run for office and are defeated aren't rejected in the usual sense of the word. They're just defeated because they couldn't get enough votes that one time. It doesn't mean the public despises them. It's a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment, that's all. The examples I've given have shown that when those men were passed up, they were still highly thought of and were still great men. There were a good many like that. You take the Adams family. After John Quincy Adams passed on, there were Adams descendants in Lincoln's cabinet. They wrote important histories and things of that kind. Even in the states, some good men are governors who have been defeated previously in elections, even in previous tries for governor. If they don't become pessimists and decide to lay down and take it, if they get up and start over again, why, they don't have any trouble. — Harry Truman

There was scrutiny is Lincoln's eyes as he looked at me. He was studying me. Eyeing me up and down. Taking in my hair, my mouth, my eyes. His gaze fell on the ring pierced through my nose. He stopped at the small leftover drawings illustrated on my wrists from yesterday's English class doodlings--reading me like I was a book that had been on a shelf so long dust embossed the title on the spine. He read me as though he was the first to crack open that cover in over a decade. I felt him blowing off the pages. — Megan Squires

There's not much to any of us once you take out all the water. How much is left in a person, do you think?" She waited for an answer. "Probably less than a two-liter," Lincoln said, still feeling like it would be rude to act as if this was anything other than normal conversation. — Rainbow Rowell

I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. — Abraham Lincoln

Every man's happiness is his own responsibility. — Abraham Lincoln

To lead, you must touch men's hearts. — Abraham Lincoln

You can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today — Abraham Lincoln

Spring had come finally and after much hesitation, to Lincoln's Inn Fields and there were daffodils out upon the green grass and gilly-flowers blooming in the window-boxes of the ground floor sets. This being Lincoln's Inn, where an air of general severity prevails, they did so with an unconscionable meekness, as if they feared that some legal eminence- Mr Crabbe perhaps- would descend in wrath from his chambers and present them with a writ for unlicensed blossoming or occupying too great a proportion of space. — D.J. Taylor

I intend to see that justice is done by presiding, in the manner of the omnipotent Walter Mitty, as chief justice of a tribunal trying the case of those plotting further advances for the Chinese characters on an international scale. Emulating the operatic Mikado's "object all sublime... to let the punishment fit the crime," I hand down the following dread decree:

Anyone who believes Chinese characters to be a superior system of writing that can function as a universal script is condemned to complete the task of rendering the whole of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into Singlish.
— John DeFrancis

Nothing is endless
I know that now
Let me go
V
-Violet's letter — Jessica Shirvington

The harried Lincoln made clear to Sumner that he believed compromise would simply open the door for further demands and more concessions: "Give them personal liberty bills, and they will pull in the slack, hold on, and insist on the border-state compromises. Give them that, they'll again pull in the slack and demand Crittenden's compromise. That pulled in, they will want all that South Carolina asks." He "would sooner go out into his backyard and hang himself." Then Lincoln punctuated his resolve with a down-home pledge: "By no act or complicity of mine shall the Republican party become a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it. — Harold Holzer

I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed. — Walt Whitman

A man's legs must be long enough to reach the ground. — Abraham Lincoln

Communism is as Jewish as the Mafia is Italian. It's a fact that almost all of the convicted spies for communism have been atheist Jews like the Rosenbergs. And international communism was invented by the Jew Karl Marx and has since been led mostly by Jews - like Trotsky. — George Lincoln Rockwell

Mr. Lincoln, the merciful and just, who cries large tears over Mrs. Bixby's five boys, hasn't any tears to shed about the thousands of Yankees dying at Andersonville," said Rhett, his mouth twisting. "He doesn't care if they all die. The order is out. No exchanges. — Margaret Mitchell

President Bush's 'Mission Accomplished,' declaration from the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 was not just premature, but an untruth. — Greg Barron

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment's sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society. — Abraham Lincoln

Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. — Abraham Lincoln

I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. — Ray Bradbury

We had so many different presidents, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln - there were other founders like Hamilton, Adams - who made it very clear that the courts can't make a law. The Constitution is expressly clear that that's a power reserved to Congress. — Mike Huckabee

The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody, let's pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln's picture on the bill, and ask, "How would Lincoln handle this problem if he had it? — Dale Carnegie

I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking. — Gerald R. Ford

Here is a bold embrace of internationalism. Let's join the rest of the world and go metric. — Lincoln Chafee

Like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong. — David Mamet

If you attend a meeting of evolutionary biologists somewhere in America, you might be lucky and spot a tall, gray-whiskered, smiling man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, standing rather diffidently at the back of the crowd. He will probably be surrounded by a knot of admirers, hanging on his every word - for he is a man of few words. A whisper will go around the room: "George is here." You will sense from people's reactions the presence of greatness. — Matt Ridley

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

The problem is that we tend too often to read Lincoln's growth backward, as an unproblematic trajectory toward a predetermined end. This enables scholars to ignore or downplay aspects of Lincoln's beliefs with which they are uncomfortable. — Eric Foner

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation. — John George Nicolay

[L]ike it or not, the right timing is an inescapable part of human endeavor and thus of politics. . . . But some activists suggest that "timing" is irrelevant in public policy and politics. In their view, it's just another "excuse" by "incrementalists," another example of their traitorous cowardice, another reason why they should be condemned and purged. . . . There is a fundamental ethical and practical difference between compromise and prudently fighting for the most good that can be gained in the face of overwhelming odds. . . . Realizing the constraints and limits of this world should guard us against unrealistic expectations of what politics can or should achieve. And yet, the examples of Wilberforce and Lincoln, among many others, demonstrate that moral purpose can be successfully pursued in politics with prudence. — Clarke D. Forsythe

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

What did The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and all that have to do with our present enthusiasm for women's rights? Not that much, really. Women just got lucky this time. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father. — Lincoln Ellsworth

I believe in monstrosities, and 'I Am Abraham' is a monstrosity of sorts, raveling out moment by moment with its contrapuntal songs, as if a band of musicians were at play, all of them with Lincoln's beard and disturbing grey eyes. — Jerome Charyn

Now that the Court has declared money to be speech, I say we replace the current Court with some Ben Franklins, Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, a couple of Susan B. Anthony's, Roosevelts, Hamiltons, a Sacajawea or two, and an Abe Lincoln to cover Scalia in full. — Elayne Boosler

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship. — Lincoln Diaz-Balart

Lincoln grew immeasurably as he came to think of himself as an instrument of God's will. — Joe L. Wheeler

Of all the paradoxes of Lincoln's life, none is more powerful than the fact that the man who would come to be known throughout the world - from American schoolrooms to the tribal councils of the Caucasus Mountains - was deeply mysterious to the people who knew him best. "Those who have spoken most confidently of their knowledge of his personal qualities," wrote the Pennsylvania Republican Alexander McClure, "are, as a rule, those who saw least of them below the surface. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

I mean, if you have any idea of any kind of complexity or immensity or destiny, of general order, you're put in a position of nothingness. And I think this is true. I don't think I'm anything; I never have thought that. Whatever it is that activates it is a certain kind of energy that goes on. But the effect is ridiculous; it's absurd."
--Lincoln Kirstein in "The New Yorker — Lincoln Kirstein

{When Abraham Lincoln was 26 years old in 1835, he wrote a defense of Thomas Paine's deism; a political associate, Samuel Hill, burned it to save Lincoln's political career. Historian Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's papers, said Paine had a strong influence on Lincoln's style:}

No other writer of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Jefferson, parallels more closely the temper or gist of Lincoln's later thought. In style, Paine above all others affords the variety of eloquence which, chastened and adapted to Lincoln's own mood, is revealed in Lincoln's formal writings. — Roy Basler

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. — Aberjhani

If Lincoln's primary goal in the War was not the abolition of slavery but simply to preserve the Union, the question arises: Why did the Union need preserving? Or, more pointedly, why did the Southern states want to secede? — G. Edward Griffin

Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it;" and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the inexhaustible resources of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. — James Russell Lowell

Always, in Lincoln's mature theology, there is paradox. There is starting this, yet there is also tenderness; there is melancholy, yet there is also humor: there is moral law, yet there is also compassion. History is the scene of the working out God's justice, which we can never escape, but it is also the scene of the revelation of the everlasting mercy. — Elton Trueblood

The war was not won by any single individual, be it Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant. The Union, as a whole, triumphed. The national army, fielding over two million men in toto, led by legions of staff, company, field, and general officers; a correspondingly potent navy; and a far more powerful economy than its adversary were all needed to ultimately subdue the Confederacy. — Joseph A. Rose

Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son's teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. "Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books ... But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside," it says. "Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat. — Malala Yousafzai

Just across from Bismarck stood Fort Lincoln where friends and relatives of Custer's dead cavalrymen still lived, and these emigrating Sioux could perceive such bitterness in the air that one Indian on the leading boat displayed a white flag. Yet, in accordance with the laws of human behavior, the farther downstream they traveled the less hostility they encountered, and when the tiny armada reached Standing Rock near the present border of South Dakota these Indians were welcomed as celebrities. Men, women and children crowded aboard the General Sherman to shake hands with Sitting Bull. Judson Elliot Walker, who was just then finishing a book on Custer's campaigns, had to stand on a chair to catch a glimpse of the medicine man and reports that he was wearing "green wire goggles." No details are provided, so green wire goggles must have been a familiar sight in those days. Sitting Bull mobbed by fans while wearing green wire goggles. It sounds like Hollywood. — Evan S. Connell

But I must add that the U.S. government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches. When an individual, in a church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such take care of themselves. It will not do for the U.S. to appoint Trustees, Supervisors, or other agents for the churches. — Abraham Lincoln

The world's problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom. — Julian Lincoln Simon

There's no better way to unplug than having children. Changing diapers is one of the most leveling things that has ever happened to me. — Andrew Lincoln

Lincoln found himself in a stifling courtroom one hot summer day, pleading his client's case. The opposing lawyer, in a concession to the oppressive heat, took off his coat and vest as the debate went on. The man's shirt had its buttons in the back, a style which was unusual even then. Lincoln looked at his opponent and sized up the man's apparel. Knowing that the rural jury disliked pretension of any kind, or any attempt to show superior social rank, he said: "Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think you will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowledge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front." The jury burst into laughter, and Lincoln won the case. — Rriiver Nyile

But having said all of that, that still doesn't account for a lot of the increase in popularity which stems, I think, from Lincoln's personal characteristics. — David Herbert Donald

I was surprised at the level of commitment that Andrew Lincoln has. The extreme situations that he's asked to perform - that's got to be seriously draining, and he keeps going and going. He's almost not human. — Seth Gilliam

Same difference," he said. "The South lost and the North won. Abraham Lincoln came and gave the Emancipation Proclamation."
"The Gettysburg Address," Mrs. Anderson said. "The Emancipation Proclamation was delivered six months before the battle."
He gave an exaggerated sigh. "Who's giving the report here?"
She waved her hand. "Proceed then."
"Like I said, the North won. The slaves were all freed. Hurrah, hurrah. The end. — J.M. Darhower

Washington's is the mightiest name of earth - long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on. — Abraham Lincoln

I've long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, propertyowning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine. — Ronald Reagan

One of my top priorities in Congress is to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. — Lincoln Diaz-Balart

One voice was raised in dissent. A Springfield lawyer, a former member of Congress and longtime Whig named Abraham Lincoln, took up Douglas's defense of Kansas-Nebraska at the Illinois statehouse in Springfield the day after Douglas spoke at the state fair. In the course of a three-hour speech, Lincoln proceeded to tear Kansas-Nebraska and popular sovereignty to shreds. — Allen C. Guelzo

Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis's sword to the illustrious, the immortal Washington, or rather by his order, to the brave Lincoln, the sun of Liberty and Independence burst through a sable cloud, and his benign influence was, almost instantaneously, felt in our remotest corners! — Deborah Sampson

Writing on your own is, in a way, a very lonely profession. There's no one there to help you. — Lincoln Child

Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln's Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer's rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker

I have had the opportunity to work with Andy Lincoln a lot. He's got a remarkable process. He just has these ways of sinking into the scene and into character that are very physical. He'll make these sounds and these grunts and these moans ... I don't know what it is that he's channeling! It lets you know it's okay for you to do that, too. — Andrew J. West

I will either be America's greatest president or its last. — Abraham Lincoln