Lincoln – Quotes

• African American Soldier to Lincoln:  “I get sick at the smell of boot black and I can’t cut hair.”
• Abe Lincoln:  “Well sir, I’ve yet to have a hair cut that will make any difference.  My last barber hanged himself.”

 

• Secretary of State Seward Regarding the 13^th amendment:  “We’ll lose.”
• Abe:  “I like our chances now.”

 

• Preston Blair:  “All republicans ought to be conservative.  My republicans aren’t abolitionists.”

 

• Lincoln:  “We’re whalers!”
• “As in…whales?”
• Lincoln:  “We’ve been chasing this whale for a long time.”

 

• Pendleton:  “Congress must never declare as equal that which nature has deemed unequal.”
• Thaddeus Stevens:  “What violates natural law is slavery and you, Pendleton, you violate God you unnatural noise.”

 

• Lincoln:  “If you can look into the grains of time and tell me which seed will grow…”

 

• Robert Lincoln:  “That war will be over in a month and you know it.”
• Abe:  “I’ve found that prophesying is one of life’s most useless professions.”

 

• Mary Lincoln to Thaddeus Stevens:  “How the people love my husband…  They’ll never love you as much.  How difficult for you to know that.  And yet how important.”

 

• “When people disagree, we must bring them together and we must do so slowly till they come around.”

 

• Thaddeus Stevens:  “This is the face of a man who has worked for the good of the people without caring much for them.  And I look a lot worse without the wig.”

 

• Thaddeus Stevens:  “You claim you can trust them. But you know what the people are. You know the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, north and south, unto utter uselessness though tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country’s infinite abundance with Negroes.”
• Abraham Lincoln:  “A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it’ll… it’ll point you True North from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and dessert and chasm that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp… What’s the use of knowing True North?”

 

• Lincoln:  “My trust in [Grant] is marrow deep.”

 

• “Should I transmit sir?”
• Lincoln:  “Do you think we choose to be born?  Or do we choose to be fitted to the times?”
• “You may be sir.”

 

• Lincoln:  “Euclid’s first common notion is this: Things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other. That’s a rule of mathematical reasoning and its true because it works – has done and always will do. In his book Euclid says this is self evident. You see there it is even in that 2000 year old book of mechanical law it is the self evident truth that things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other.  Euclid says this is self evident – a self evident truth.  …  We begin with equality.  That’s the origin of fairness, balance, justice.”

 

• Stevens:  “The true purpose of the amendment, Mr. Wood, you perfectly named, brainless obstacle, the true purpose of the amendment…  I don’t hold with equality of all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.”

 

• Stevens:  “How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands stinking the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio?  Proof that some men are inferior.  Endowed by their maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood.  You are more reptile than man, George, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.  Even you ought to be treated equal before the law.  You may not be equal in all things, but equality before for the law.”

 

• “Is there nothing that you will say?”
• Stevens:  “I am sorry that you are nauseas?  They say that’s very unpleasant.  I’ve worked all my life for this law, so no, there’s very nearly nothing I won’t say.”

 

• Robert Lincoln about enlisting:  “I won’t be you, Pa.  I can’t do that.  But I don’t want to do nothing.”

 

• Lincoln to his wife:  “Robert will never forgive himself.  You think he’ll ever forgive us?”

 

• Lincoln to his wife:  “Just once I ask you to take the liberal rather than the selfish point of view.”

 

• Lincoln to his wife:  “I can’t tolerate your grieving so far because I couldn’t permit it in myself.”

 

• Lincoln to his wife:  “I must make my decisions, you yours, Bobby His…  You alone, Mary, may lighten this burden or render it intolerable as you choose.”

 

• “I never heard anyone ask what freedom would bring.  Freedom is first.”

 

• Bilbo:  “Well, I’ll be f*****.”
• Lincoln, with a smirk:  “Well, I wouldn’t bet against it.”

 

• Lincoln to Bilbo:  “What a joy to be comprehended.”

 

• Stevens to Coffroth:  “I haven ‘t noticed you.  I’m…a Republican, and you, Coughdrop, are a Democrat?… The modern travesty of Thomas Jefferson’s political organization to which you have attached yourself like a barnacle has the effrontery to call itself The Democratic Party. You are a Dem-o-crat. What’s the matter with you? Are you wicked?”

 

• Hutton:  “I can’t comprehend what he died for.  I’m a prejudiced man.  I hate them all.”
• Lincoln:  “I would change that for you if I could, but that’s not why I come. I might be wrong, Mr. Hutton, but I expect. Colored people will most likely be free, and when that’s so, it’s simple truth that your brother’s bravery, and his death, helped make it so. Only you can decide whether that’s sense enough for you, or not.”

 

• Lincoln:  “We’re stepped out upon the world’s stage now, now, with the fate of human dignity in our hands! Blood’s been spilt to afford us this moment!”

 

• Lincoln:  “Abolishing slavery by constitutional provision settles the fate, for all coming time, not only of the millions now in bondage but of unborn millions to come. Two votes stand in its way, these votes must be procured…. You got a night and a day and a night and several perfectly good hours! Now get the hell out of here and get ’em!”
• James Ashley: “Yes, but how?”
• Abraham Lincoln: “Buzzards’ guts, man!  I am the President of the United States of America, clothed in immense power! You will procure me these votes.”

 

• House Speaker:  “I want to vote.”
• “This is highly unusual.”
• House Speaker:  “This is not usual.  It’s history.”

 

• “8 not voting.  56 against.  119 for with a margin of 2 votes.”

 

• Stevens:  “The best of the 19^th century, passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”

 

• Lincoln:  “If we submit ourselves to law, Alex, even submit to losing freedoms, the freedom to oppress, for instance, we may discover other freedoms previously unknown to us. Had you kept faith with democratic process, as frustrating as that can be…”
• Judge John A. Campbell: “Come sir, spare us at least these pieties. Did you defeat us with ballots?”
• Alexander Stephens: “How’ve you held your Union together? Through democracy? How many hundreds of thousands have died during your administration? Your Union, sir, is bonded in cannon fire and death.”
• Abraham Lincoln: “It may be you’re right. But say all we done is show the world that democracy isn’t chaos, that there is a great invisible strength in a people’s union? Say we’ve shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere? Mightn’t that save at least the idea of democracy, to aspire to? Eventually, to become worthy of? At all rates, whatever may be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now. Shall we stop this bleeding?”

 

• Lincoln:  “Liberality all around, not punishment.  When peace comes it must not just be hangings.”

 

• Lincoln to Grant:  “We’ve made it possible for one another to do terrible things.”
• Grant to Lincoln:  “We have won the war.  Now it is up to you to lead us out of it.”

 

• Lincoln to Mary:  “We must try to be happier.  We must.  We have been so miserable for so long.”