100+ Powerful Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Life for Inspiration & Wisdom

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

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

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

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

"I walk slowly, but I never walk backward."

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

"It is not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years."

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present."

"We can succeed only by persevering."

"Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you."

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path."

"The path was worn, but it led to nowhere."

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

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

"Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most."

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

"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."

"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."

"Dishonesty in the long run bears its own punishment."

"A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions."

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

"I look for the good qualities of a man and when I find them, I hang on to them."

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

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

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

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

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

"Any one can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall."

"I learn from books, but my favorite teacher has always been experience."

"The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the person in every other calling, is diligence."

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

"The best way out is always through."

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."

"Every man is born with a pair of scissors in his hands, cutting away at the fabric of truth."

"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."

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

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."

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

"As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

"Public sentiment is everything."

"The office of President is merely instrumental to the great end of government."

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."

"Let us have faith that right makes might."

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty."

"I am not prepared to say that the strongest of all governments is an elective one."

"The people—the people are the rightful masters of both congress and courts."

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

"I have always thought that all men should be free."

"I am not afraid to die. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and it never hurt me."

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."

"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

"I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

"I have often wished that I were a better man."

"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."

"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."

"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent."

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

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve."

"I have always thought that all men should be free."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

"I leave you, hoping that you will never see it again, unless you swear that by the grace of God you will never suffer it to rise again."

"I am not naturally aggressive. But when calm reason compels, I find myself able to be very determined."

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."

"I have never seen the man who could do something for me that I would not pay a fair price for."

"The world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty'."

"Democracy is direct rule of the people over the people."

"All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness to be the first to declare as a self-evident truth that 'all men are created equal.'"

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

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business."

"I am not concerned that you have fallen—I am concerned that you arise."

"I laugh because I must not cry."

"I have always been a whig in politics, but I have never known just what that meant."

"I am not fit for the company of learned men."

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery."

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."

"I have never claimed to be smarter than anyone else."

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."

"I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog does not love him."

"I am not concerned with what people think of me."

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty."

"We can succeed only by persevering."

"Let us have faith that right makes might."

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

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis."

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right."

"The future lies ahead of us, not behind us."

"I am not afraid of the word 'revolution.' We are the revolution."

"Let us judge nothing that we may not stand condemned."

"Let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

"We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated, having no other object than to drive slavery out of these United States."

"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

"Truth is the best vindication against slander."

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."

"You may 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."

"Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most."

"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."

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

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."

"I have always thought that all men should be free."

"Dishonesty in the long run bears its own punishment."

"I have never willingly told a lie, nor taken any unfair advantage."

"I am not bound to please everybody."

"Integrity in the highest degree is the foundation of character."

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

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

"I am not concerned that you have fallen—I am concerned that you arise."

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."

"Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I have always plucked a thorn and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight."

"I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thorn and planted a rose."

"Life is too short for hate; there is no time for bitterness."

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

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true."