Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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Quoted in Vernon K. McLellan (2000) Wise Words and Quotes
Misattributed

Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller
Posthumous attributions

Conversation with private secretary John Hay (23 December 1863), describing a dream Lincoln had that evening, in Abraham Lincoln : A History (1890) by John Hay
Posthumous attributions

Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow (1955), Speaker's Book of Epigrams and Witticisms
Misattributed

Attributed in Evan Esar (1949), The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
Misattributed

Letter to Joseph Gillespie http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:88.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext (13 July 1849)
1840s

Attributed in Deborah Gillan Straub (1996), Native North American Voices
Misattributed

Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed

As quoted in The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln (1896) by Ida Tarbell
Posthumous attributions

Speech of the Sub-Treasury (1839), Collected Works 1:178 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln1;rgn=div1;node=lincoln1:193
Variant (misspelling): The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; and it shall not deter me.
1830s
Context: Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. 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.

Source: 1860s, The Gettysburg Address (1863)
Context: 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Context: 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Source: Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858

Letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning (1 April 1838) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln1/1:134?rgn=div1;view=fulltext, Cllected Works, vol. 1. p. 119
1830s
Context: I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

Written speech fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln2;rgn=div1;node=lincoln2%3A547
Posthumous attributions

Recalled in a letter from Joshua Speed in Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 527 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA527&dq=%22plucked+a+thistle+and+planted+a+flower%22
Posthumous attributions

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)
1840s

Source: 1850s, Letter to Henry L. Pierce (1859), p. 375
Context: The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are both for the man and the dollar, but, in case of conflict, the man before the dollar. I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men.

Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan (27 August 1856) http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=14&subjectID=2, Collected Works 1:391 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:391?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
1850s

1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. 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.
Context: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. 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.

Lincoln never said these words, but wrote and said some that are very similar to the above quote. As Lincoln's popularity within the Republican Party grew, he was invited to address members of his party throughout the nation. In September 1859 Lincoln gave several speeches to Ohio Republicans. The notes Lincoln used for his 1859 engagements state: "We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us — We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the constitution demands it — But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention — We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does require the prevention — We must prevent these things being done, by either congresses or courts — The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it —" Source: Abraham Lincoln [September 16-17, 1859<nowiki> http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d0189300))#I379</nowiki>] (Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio) http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal1/018/0189300/malpage.db&recNum=1 in "Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916." Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois. Lincoln transformed his prior quoted notes in the following words: "I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient Fugitive Slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." Source: Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, September 17, 1859 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/5/3253/3253-h/files/2657/2657-h/2657-h.htm#2H_4_0043; in "The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Five, Constitutional Edition", edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley and released as " The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Five, by Abraham Lincoln http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/5/3253/3253-h/files/2657/2657-h/2657-h.htm" (2009) by Project Gutenberg.
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Abraham Lincoln / Disputed
1850s

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)