Abraham Lincoln citations célèbres
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
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 •
en
Adresse de Gettysburg : gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple, pour le peuple, 1863
Abraham Lincoln: Citations en anglais
1860s, Letter to James C. Conkling (1863)
Source: 1860s, Speech in Independence Hall (1861)
to Erastus Corning and Others https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln6/1:569?rgn=div1;view=fulltextLetter (12 June 1863) in "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol.6" (The Abraham Lincoln Association, 1953), p. 265
1860s
Repentance before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness.
Regarding his debate with Judge S. A. Douglas, in his Springfield address (17 July 1858), published in The Life, Speeches, and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln: Together with a Sketch of the Life of Hannibal Hamlin: Republican candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States (1860), p. 50
Lincoln was alluding to the words of Jesus in Luke 15:7 http://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Luke%2015%3A7
1850s
“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”
This quote is incorrectly quoted from Lincoln's Address to Congress on July 4, 1861 http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3508, in which Lincoln outlined the events that had led to the American Civil War and his views on the nature of the rebellion by the southern slave states. To suppress the rebellion Lincoln said that Congress must "give the legal means for making this contest a short and a decisive one; that you place at the control of the Government for the work at least 400,000 men and $400,000,000." And Lincoln remarked further: "A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money. The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well".
Disputed
Purportedly in a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins (21 November 1864) http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Lincoln.html after the passage of the National Bank Act (3 June 1864), these remarks were attributed to Lincoln as early as 1887 but were denounced by John Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary and biographer. Knights of Labor, "What Will The Future Bring," Journal of United Labor, Vol 8, no. 20, Nov. 19, 1887, pg. 2. Nicolay: "This alleged quotation from Mr. Lincoln is a bald, unblushing forgery. The great President never said it or wrote it, and never said or wrote anything that by the utmost license could be distorted to resemble it." "A Popocratic Forgery" in The New York Times (3 October 1898), p. 1 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0DEFDE133BEE33A25750C0A9669D94679ED7CF [moneypowers]The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of diversity. It is more despotic then monarchy. More insolent than autocracy. More selfish then bureaucracy. I see the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country, will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people. Until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. A variant cited to The Lincoln Encyclopedia (1950) by Archer H. Shaw, p. 40, a collection of Lincoln quotations or attributions which has been criticized for including dubious material and known forgeries. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. An additional last line is included in David McGowan's Derailing Democracy: The America The Media Don't Want You To See, p.33. The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. A corruption of remarks by William Jennings Bryan at Madison Square Garden (30 August 1906)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Abraham Lincoln / Misattributed
Disputed
Regarding the treatment of former Confederate soldiers. In Richmond, Virginia (April 4, 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://archive.org/download/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 312
1860s, Tour of Richmond (1865)
1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Gazette version
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
Attributed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, reporting what a "friend, the private secretary of a cabinet minister", told him about a conversation with Lincoln, whom the friend had met alone in the White House in August 1864. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. The Story of a Picture. New York 1866, p. 275 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ny0OAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA275&dq=blister
Posthumous attributions
Attributed at a few sites to a debate in Peoria, Illinois with Stephen Douglas on 16 October 1858. No historical record of such a debate actually exists, though there was a famous set of speeches by both in Peoria on 16 October 1854, but transcripts of Lincoln's speech http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=cleaver;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln2;node=lincoln2%3A282 on that date do not indicate that he made such a statement. It in fact comes from a speech made by Douglas in the third debate http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=fejee;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln3;node=lincoln3%3A17 against Lincoln at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858.
Misattributed
1860s, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Source: Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII
“The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.”
Quoted in Victor J. Stenger (1990), Physics and Psychics
Misattributed
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
“I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.”
Remark to Gen. Edward H. Ripley (5 April 1865), recalled during Ripley's speech http://books.google.com/books?id=1OoSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353&dq=believe at the 41st annual meeting of the Reunion Society of Vermont Officers (1 November 1904)
Posthumous attributions
Orders to the Secretary of War https://books.google.com/books?id=uEc_cG58dZQC&pg=PA19 (1 February 1864)
1860s
“Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”
Letter to Major General http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/lett-4.htm Joseph Hooker (26 January 1863)
1860s
“The Confederacy stands for slavery and the Union for freedom.”
Private conversation https://books.google.com/books?id=cpLsLWYhMLoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22not+a+man+shall+be+a+slave%22+%22Mcpherson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAzgKahUKEwjiwOnYqoLIAhUIez4KHaTnDok#v=onepage&q=slavery&f=false (January 1862)
1860s
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Contexte: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)
Speech in Springfield, Illinois (17 July 1858), referring to Stephen Douglas. Quoted in Charles Sumner (1861), The Promises of the Declaration of Independence
1850s
1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
“So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
Comment on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, according to Charles Edward Stowe, Lyman Beecher Stowe, "How Mrs. Stowe wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", McClure's magazine 36:621 http://books.google.com/books?id=biAAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA621&dq=%22little+woman+who+wrote+the+book+that+made+this+great+war%22 (April 1911), with a footnote stating: "Mr. Charles Edward Stowe, one of the authors of this article, accompanied his mother on this visit to Lincoln, and remembers the occasion distinctly."
Annie Fields, "Days with Mrs. Stowe", Atlantic Monthly 7:148 http://books.google.com/books?id=8F0CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=%22Is+this+the+little+woman+who+made+the+great+war%22 (August 1896)
Posthumous attributions
Variante: Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made the great war?"
Variante: So you are the little woman who caused this great war!
1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version
