Abraham Lincoln citations (623 citations, Page 15)

Abraham Lincoln: 623 citations 2 J'aime

Abraham Lincoln citations célèbres

“On peut tromper une partie du peuple tout le temps et tout le peuple une partie du temps, mais on ne peut pas tromper tout le peuple tout le temps.”

Abraham Lincoln

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Les gens sont généralement à peu près aussi heureux qu'ils décident de l'être.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Je dirai donc que je ne suis pas ni n'ai jamais été pour l'égalité politique et sociale des noirs et des blancs, que je ne suis pas, ni n'ai jamais été, pour le fait d'avoir des électeurs ni des jurés noirs, ni pour le fait de les former à exercer ses fonctions, ni en faveur des mariages mixtes; et je dirai en plus de ceci, qu'il y a une différence physique entre la race blanche et la race noire qui interdira pour toujours aux deux races de vivre ensemble dans des conditions d'égalité sociale et politique. Et dans la mesure où ils ne peuvent pas vivre ensemble mais qu'ils coexistent, il faut qu'il y ait une position de supériorité et d'infériorité, et moi-même, autant que n'importe quel autre homme, je suis pour le fait que la position de supériorité soit attribuée à la race blanche.”

Abraham Lincoln

I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of
Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858

“Peu importe ce que vous êtes. Soyez bons.”

Abraham Lincoln

“C’est plutôt à nous d’être ici voués à la grande tâche qui nous revient… que de ces honorés défunts nous portions une dévotion grandissante à cette cause pour laquelle ils ont donné la dernière et grande mesure de dévouement; que nous prenions ici la ferme résolution que ces morts ne seront pas morts en vain; que cette nation, si Dieu le veut, verra renaître la liberté; et que le gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple, pour le peuple, ne disparaîtra pas de la terre.”

Abraham Lincoln

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 •
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Adresse de Gettysburg : gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple, pour le peuple, 1863

Abraham Lincoln: Citations en anglais

“Now, my countrymen if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever; but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity; the Declaration of American Independence.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Speech at Lewistown, Illinois (1858)

“He went on to speak of the manner in which slavery was treated by the Constitution. The word 'slave' is no where used; the supply of slaves was to be prohibited after 1808; they stopped the spread of it in the territories; seven of the states abolished it. He argued very conclusively that it was then regarded as an evil which would eventually be got rid of, and that they desired, once rid of it, to have nothing in the constitution to remind them of it. The Republicans go back to first principles and deal with it as a wrong. Mason, of Va., said openly that the framers of our government were anti-slavery. Hammond of S. C., said 'Washington set this evil example'. Bully Brooks said: 'At the time the Constitution was formed, no one supposed slavery would last till now.”

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Abraham Lincoln

We stick to the policy of our fathers.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

“You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Letter to James C. Conkling (1863)

“In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Gazette version

“!-- Your kind letter of the 25th ult., and the express package containing the bronze medal of -->Mr. Clay, during my whole political life, I have loved and revered as a teacher and leader.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Letter to Daniel Ullmann (1 February 1861); quoted in "Why Abraham Lincoln Was a Whig" by Daniel Walker Howe, The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 16, Issue 1 (Winter 1995) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0016.105?view=text;rgn=main; also in We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861 (2013) by William J. Cooper, p. 72 http://books.google.com/books?id=meYLTCRlHaQC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=Lincoln+%22I+have+loved+and+revered%22&source=bl&ots=A-QLTNlkSN&sig=F0MdGo6rkAVKc3tIQSs0Xp4AdSY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fmpQUv22LpCi4APhj4HoDQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Lincoln%20%22I%20have%20loved%20and%20revered%22&f=false
1860s

“I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)

“We hope all danger may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be extremely dangerous.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

“Slavery is wrong in its effect upon white people and free labor; it is the only thing that threatens the Union. It makes what Senator Seward has been much abused for calling an 'irrepressible conflict'. When they get ready to settle it, we hope they will let us know. Public opinion settles every question here, any policy to be permanent must have public opinion at the bottom, something in accordance with the philosophy of the human mind as it is. The property basis will have its weight. The love of property and a consciousness of right or wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often make a man's course seem crooks, his conduct a riddle.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

“Certainly it is not so easy to pay something as it is to pay nothing, but it is easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And it is easier to pay any sum when we are able than it is to pay it before we are able.”

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Abraham Lincoln

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

“Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When”

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Abraham Lincoln

Manuscript poem, as a teenager (ca. 1824–1826) http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/al.html#1, in "Lincoln as Poet" at Library of Congress : Presidents as Poets http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/al.html also in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) edited by Roy. P. Basler, Vol. 1
1820s

“Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.”

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Abraham Lincoln

As quoted in Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War (1922) by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson.
1860s

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, "If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)

“I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)

“I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly — that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union be dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska-law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence because the elections since, clearly demand it's repeal, and this demand is openly disregarded. You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)

“I am a patient man — always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance. Still I must save this government if possible.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Letter to Reverdy Johnson (26 July 1862)
1860s

“For several years past the revenues of the government have been unequal to its expenditures, and consequently loan after loan, sometimes direct and sometimes indirect in form, has been resorted to. By this means a new national debt has been created, and is still growing on us with a rapidity fearful to contemplate — a rapidity only reasonably to be expected in a time of war. This state of things has been produced by a prevailing unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to direct taxation. But the one or the other must come. Coming expenditures must be met, and the present debt must be paid; and money cannot always be borrowed for these objects. The system of loans is but temporary in its nature, and must soon explode. It is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us destitute. As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and, next, no one left to borrow from, so must it be with a government. We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax, must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is now denied by no one.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Whig Circular (1843), reported in Richard Watson Gilder and Daniel Fish Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1 (1905)
1840s

“Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants — and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse — we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Last public address (1865)

“He's the quietest little fellow you ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew. I believe he had been in this room a minute or so before I knew he was here. Grant is the first general I have had. You know how it's been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, they all wanted me to be the general. Now it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first general I've had that didn't.”

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Abraham Lincoln

About General U.S. Grant, as quoted in The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Narrative and Descriptive Biography http://www.granthomepage.com/grantgeneral.htm, by Francis Fisher Brown, p. 520
1860s

“The severest justice may not always be the best policy.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Veto message, eventually not executed, written as a response to the Second Confiscation Act passed by Congress. (17 July 1862)
The Emancipation Proclamation, by John Hope Franklin, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, NY, 1963, p. 19
1860s