Abraham Lincoln is proof that greatness comes not from one’s personal wealth but their character. Born into poverty Lincoln was something of a renaissance man. He was a businessman, lawyer, captain in the Illinois militia, postmaster, surveyor, congressman, and of course the 16th President of the United States. He led the country through the Civil war, one of the most horrific events in the history of the United States. He also abolished slavery. Despite not being formally educated, Lincoln was wildly brilliant in many ways. Not only was he a skilled lawyer and politician but he was also privy to the ways of the world and the common man. He lived by the words written in the Constitution. With his large stature and natural charisma, Lincoln was a natural born leader who was easily able to command a crowd. Lincoln delivered some of the most memorable speeches ever. We at MMD decided to highlight 20 of his most prolific quotes dealing with everything from the Constitution to war.
“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.”
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
“Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.”
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”
“If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.”
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”
“And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.”
“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.”
“The old general rule was that educated people did not perform manual labor. They managed to eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing it to the uneducated. This was not an insupportable evil to the working bees, so long as the class of drones remained very small. But now, especially in these free States, nearly all are educated–quite too nearly all, to leave the labor of the uneducated, in any wise adequate to the support of the whole. It follows from this that henceforth educated people must labor. Otherwise, education itself would become a positive and intolerable evil. No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.”
“On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self evident lie.”
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
“I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.”
“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.”
“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”
“In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”
“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; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
“He who does something at the head of one Regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.”
“War at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.”
“Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.”
