Inspirational Abraham Lincoln Quotes: Timeless Wisdom to Motivate Your Journey

"With malice towards none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

- Abraham Lincoln

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I will prepare, and someday my chance will come."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If you want to test a man's character, give him power."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I do the very best I know how–the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

- Peter Drucker

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I say ‘try’; if we never try, we shall never succeed."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any one thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I will prepare and some day my chance will come."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

- Abraham Lincoln

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? IS there any better or equal hope in the world?"

- Abraham Lincoln

"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."

- Abraham Lincoln

"That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."

- Abraham Lincoln

"You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I am a slow walker, but I never walk back."

- Abraham Lincoln

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Work, work, work, is the main thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flatboat – just what might happen to any poor man’s son. I want every man to have a chance."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Let none falter, who thinks he is right, and we may succeed."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it."

- Abraham Lincoln

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves"

- Abraham Lincoln

"You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves."

- 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."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

- Abraham Lincoln

"And in the end, it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."

- Alphonse Karr

"Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me, and I didn't have the heart to let him down."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

- Peter Drucker

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

- Abraham Lincoln

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

- Abraham Lincoln

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

- Abraham Lincoln

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Every man's happiness is his own responsibility."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I have a congenital aversion to failure."

- Abraham Lincoln

"And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts."

- Abraham Lincoln

"A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The people – the people – are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships."

- Abraham Lincoln

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle – the sheet anchor of American republicanism."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The people will save their government, if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The people’s will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all."

- Abraham Lincoln

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”"

- Abraham Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

- Abraham Lincoln

"It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals."

- Abraham Lincoln

"All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

- Abraham Lincoln

"All creation is a mine, and every man a miner."

- Abraham Lincoln

"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

- Abraham Lincoln

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Bad promises are better broken than kept."

- Abraham Lincoln

"It is said that we have the best government the world ever knew, and I am glad to meet you, the supporters of that government."

- Abraham Lincoln

"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

- Abraham Lincoln

"No man is poor who has a Godly mother."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion."

- Abraham Lincoln

"To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."

- Abraham Lincoln

"My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Half finished work generally proves to be labor lost."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I have received nothing but kindness at your hands."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Happy day, when, all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected, mind all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world."

- Abraham Lincoln

"I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

- Abraham Lincoln

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."