Abraham Lincoln

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.

My friends: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good- let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time. Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. - Alexander K. McClure, "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, p. 184 (1904). Many quotation books have also attributed this to Lincoln, with a variety of sources given. According to Roy R Basler ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 81 (1953), "Tradition has come to attribute to the Clinton [Illinois] speeches [September 2, 1858] one of Lincoln's most famous utterances - '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.'" But he goes on to say that the epigram and any references to it have not been located in Surviving Lincoln documents. This remark has also been attributed to P. T. Barnum.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own, 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!

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

After a man reaches forty, he is responsible for his face.

The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.

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 heavens and say there is no God.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.