Lincoln Quotes

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. (Barack Obama)
There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don't mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that's the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln. View quote
John Steinbeck
The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, was put into effect on January 1, 1863, but news of the Proclamation and enforcement did not reach Texas until after the end of the Civil War almost two years later. View quote
Corrine Brown
The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place. View quote
Matthew Sweet
For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would. View quote
Sydney Pollack
It's been a very old thing for people to gather together and laugh at stuff. The first comedian in America really was Abraham Lincoln ... He used to go to a pub near where he lived and stand in front of the fire and he packed the place every night and he would just talk and bust everybody in their guts. He was just a hilarious speaker and that's what he did. View quote
Louis C.K.
When Abraham Lincoln was shovelled into the tombs,he forgot the copperheads and the assassin . . .in the dust, in the cool tombs. View quote
Carl Sandburg
Lincoln was a man who created himself from nothing without any help from outside or other people. I followed his struggles. I see certain similarities between him and me. View quote
Muammar Gaddafi
This play John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many. View quote
Dorothy Parker
If Lincoln had an affair with a slave woman, it would be an outrage, but when Clinton does it with one of his staff, everyone is okay with it. View quote
Bob Dole
God gave us Lincoln and Liberty, let us fight for both. (Ulysses S. Grant)
A bunch of money-grubbin', greenhouse-gasing, seal-clubbing, oil-drilling, Bible-thumping, missile-firing, right-to-life-ing, lethal-injecting hypocrites. People whose idea of a good time is strapping a dead panda to a Lincoln Navigator and running over everybody in the gay parade. View quote
Richard Jeni
Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead. View quote
Sarah Vowell
I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further. View quote
Sarah Vowell
Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot. View quote
Sarah Vowell
It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show. View quote
Kurt Vonnegut
There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power. View quote
J. William Fulbright
Lincoln -- they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me. So democracy has never been for the faint of heart. View quote
Barack Obama
And why should we, of all people, expect the proud new developing nations to see the world precisely as we see it? Was any new nation ever more outspoken, independent and unaligned than the young America of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln? View quote
Chester Bowles
I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking. View quote
Gerald Ford
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. (John F. Kennedy)
How many kids are in the Graveyard?" "A bunch." "Who sends your supplies?" "George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget." "How often do you receive new arrivals?" "About as often as you beat your wife. View quote
Neal Shusterman
You're not an idiot. You're just eccentric. (Selena) That's what they said about Mary Todd Lincoln. Until they locked her up. (Grace) View quote
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism. View quote
Jacob Weisberg
Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot. View quote
Elihu Root