Some historians have opined that the assassination quip was in response to an assassination threat Lincoln had been notified about earlier.
1860s, Speech in Independence Hall (1861)
“My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can.”
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician
Said to the Duke of Devonshire in 1756, quoted in Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II (Yale University Press, 1985), III, p. 1.
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Speech in New York City (19 February 1965), two days before he was assassinated.
Attributed
George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician
New Morality. Compare: "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies", attributed to Maréchal Villars, when taking leave of Louis XIV.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I am I and my circumstance, and if I don't save it I don't save myself.”
José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist
Meditations on Quixote (1914)
“We have to save the world," I reminded him.
He reached for me. "The world can wait. I can't.”
Karen Marie Moning (1964) author
Source: Shadowfever
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
Context: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran
Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews
Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads
Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!
“Can we begin again? Save it for another friend, I was happy in my life I won’t pretend. ~ "EZ"”
Pete Yorn (1974) American musician
Song lyrics
“I would rather save the life of one citizen than kill a thousand enemies.”
Scipio Africanus (-235–-183 BC) Roman general in the Second Punic War
...malle se unum civem servare quam mille hostes occidere.
According to the Historia Augusta (fourth century), Roman emperor Antoninus Pius often repeated this saying of Scipio ("Antoninus Pius", 9.10); no earlier attribution to Scipio (or mention of the dictum itself, for that matter) is known.
Disputed
