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1860s, A Short Autobiography (1860)
Context: The of 1832 broke out. Abraham joined a volunteer company, and, to his own surprise, was elected captain of it. He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction. He went to the campaign, served near three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but was in no battle. He now owns, in Iowa, the land upon which his own warrants for the service were located. Returning from the campaign, and encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neighbors, he the same year ran for the legislature, and was beaten — his own precinct, however, casting its votes 277 for and 7 against him... This was the only time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people.<!--pp.16-17

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.

Reply to Oliver P. Morton at Indianapolis, Indiana http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:312?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=shall+the+union+and+shall+the+liberties (February 11, 1861); published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 202, p. 193-194 <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Context: While I do not expect, upon this occasion, or on any occasion, till after I get to Washington, to attempt any lengthy speech, I will only say that to the salvation of this Union there needs but one single thing — the hearts of a people like yours. When the people rise in masses in behalf of the Union and the liberties of their country, truly may it be said, &quot;the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.&quot; In all the trying positions in which I shall be placed, and doubtless I shall be placed in many trying ones, my reliance will be placed upon you and the people of the United States — and I wish you to remember now and forever, that it is your business, and not mine; that if the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time. It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty, for yourselves, and not for me. I desire they shall be constitutionally preserved. I, as already intimated, am but an accidental instrument, temporary, and to serve but for a limited time, but I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that with you, and not with politicians, not with Presidents, not with office-seekers, but with you, is the question, ``Shall the Union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest generation? ``

1860s, A Short Autobiography (1860)
Context: Abraham now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or academy as a student, and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law license. What he has in the way of education he has picked up. After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar — imperfectly of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress. He regrets his want of education, and does what he can to supply the want. In his tenth year he was kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time.<!--pp. 9-10

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)
Context: 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.

His response when &quot;accused of treating his opponents with too much courtesy and kindness, and when it was pointed out to him that his whole duty was to destroy them&quot;, as quoted in More New Testament Words (1958) by William Barclay; either this anecdote or Lincoln&#x27;s reply may have been adapted from a reply attributed to Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund:<br>:* Some courtiers reproached the Emperor Sigismond that, instead of destroying his conquered foes, he admitted them to favour. “Do I not,” replied the illustrious monarch, “effectually destroy my enemies, when I make them my friends?”<br>::* &quot;Daily Facts&quot; in The Family Magazine Vol. IV (1837), p. 123 http://books.google.de/books?id=aW0EAAAAQAAJ&amp;pg=PA123&amp;dq=destroy; also quoted as simply in &quot;Do I not effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?&quot; in The Sociable Story-teller (1846) <br class="br">Disputed

Attributed in Laura Haddock (1931), Steps Upward in Personality
Misattributed
Variant: I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.

Letter to Isham Reavis (5 November 1855)
1850s
Context: If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.... Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

As quoted in &quot;Lincoln&#x27;s Imagination&quot; by Noah Brooks, in Scribner&#x27;s Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

This is probably the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln. Despite it being cited variously as from an 1856 speech, or a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, there are no known contemporary records or accounts substantiating that he ever made the statement. The earliest known appearance is October 29, 1886 in the Milwaukee Daily Journal http://anotherhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/fooling-people-earlier.html. It later appeared in the New York Times on August 26 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30817FF3E5413738DDDAF0A94D0405B8784F0D3 and August 27 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E15FF3E5413738DDDAE0A94D0405B8784F0D3, 1887. The saying was repeated several times in newspaper editorials later in 1887. In 1888 and, especially, 1889, the saying became commonplace, used in speeches, advertisements, and on portraits of Lincoln. In 1905 and later, there were attempts to find contemporaries of Lincoln who could recall Lincoln saying this. Historians have not, generally, found these accounts convincing. For more information see two articles in For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association, &quot;&#x27;You Can Fool All of the People&#x27; Lincoln Never Said That&quot;, by Thomas F. Schwartz ( V. 5, #4, Winter 2003, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/5-4.pdf) and &quot;A New Look at &#x27;You Can Fool All of the People&#x27;&quot; by David B. Parker ( V. 7, #3, Autumn 2005, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/7-3.pdf); also the talk page. The statement has also sometimes been attributed to P. T. Barnum, although no references to this have been found from the nineteenth century. <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. <br class="br">You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can&#x27;t fool all of the people all of the time. <br class="br">You can fool all the people some time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time. <br class="br">Disputed

Attributed in The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah G. Holland, p. 23; also in The Real Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by George Alfred Townsend, p. 6; according to Townsend, Lincoln made this remark to his law partner, William Herndon. It is disputed whether this quote refers to Lincoln's natural mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died when he was nine years old, or to his stepmother, Sarah Bush (Johnston) Lincoln.
Posthumous attributions

Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech..
Posthumous attributions

Attributed in Jean Dresden Grambs (1959), Abraham Lincoln Through the Eyes of High School Youth
Misattributed
Variant: If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

As recalled by Rebecca R. Pomroy in Echoes from hospital and White House (1884), by Anna L. Boyden, p. 61 http://books.google.com/books?id=7LZiAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA61&amp;dq=feet <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions