“Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it can't be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle. I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

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Abraham Lincoln 618

16th President of the United States 1809–1865

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“Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
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But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!”

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“I am I and my circumstance, and if I don't save it I don't save myself.”

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“We have to save the world," I reminded him.
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“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.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

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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.

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Interviews

“Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
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Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

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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

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Abraham Lincoln 618

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