“The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”
By Abraham Lincoln

“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
By Abraham Lincoln

“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.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
By Abraham Lincoln

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
By Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”
By Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

“I do not believe the Union will disolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other.”
By Abraham Lincoln, A House Divided

“…and that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
By Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address