Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Lincoln had entirely outgrown juvenile delight in religious argument. Talking with God seemed to the mature Lincoln more important than talking about Him.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“A major element in Lincoln's greatness was the way in which he could hold a strong moral position without the usual accompaniment of self-righteousness.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“It is most remarkable that Lincoln, when he saw so much that was vulnerable in the leadership of the Church, did not move to the opposite error and become a scoffer.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Upon being given a Bible, President Abraham Lincoln replied, "In regard to this Great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“His (Lincoln's) patriotism was saved from idolatry by the overwhelming sense of the sovereignty of God.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Man is most free when he is most guided.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“There are many instances in history of people who allow their skepticism to cut the nerve of moral effort, and there are numerous people, on the other hand, who are fierce crusaders at the price of fanaticism. In his political commitments the fanatic makes claims for his particular case which cannot be validated by either a transcendent Providence or a neutral posterity.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Always, in Lincoln's mature theology, there is paradox. There is starting this, yet there is also tenderness; there is melancholy, yet there is also humor: there is moral law, yet there is also compassion. History is the scene of the working out God's justice, which we can never escape, but it is also the scene of the revelation of the everlasting mercy.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The profound paradox is that the great man became more confident in his approach to others, including the man of his own Cabinet, but he recognized that his major confidence was not himself but in Another.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Lincoln matured best in sorrow.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“(The death of his child) "was the first experience of his life, so far as we know, which drove him to look outside of his own mind and heart for help to endure a personal grief. It was the first time in his life when he had not been sufficient for his own experience.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Out of anguish came greatness such as does not normally come in easier times.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“God, Lincoln believed, is seen more clearly events that in nature, though He maybe seen there also. It is a majestic thing, thought Lincoln, for a person to be RESPONSIBLE.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“He (Lincoln) differed from fanatical moralists primarily in that he was always perplexed. No sooner did he believe he was doing God's will that he began to admit that God's purposes might be different from his own. In short, he never forgot the men's contrast between the absolute goodness of God and the faltering goodness of all who are in the finite predicament.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“From the prophets of Israel Lincoln had learned the note will idea that there can be serving people, with responsibility to the entire "family of man".”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“In the Church he (Lincoln) saw people who, though they hated war as much as the editors did, saw with clarity what the moral alternative was.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“He was too perplexed to please the conventional and too reverent. to please the infidels.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Contradiction is the perfect evidence, he (Lincoln) thought, of human fallibility.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“He (Lincoln) was accustomed to hearing words, many of them boring, but he was not accustomed to group silence.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The Biblical language was so deeply embedded in the great man's mind that it became his normal way of speaking.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Lincoln did not admire those who think it is a mark of sophistication to sneer at patriotism. He believed that God has a will for a country and that is honest man should rejoice in the effort to try to remake his country after the Divine pattern, insofar as that pattern is revealed to him.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The writers in the newspapers could sounds smart because they did not have the responsibilities of decision, and they could sound bold by enunciating positions which they were not required to implement.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The question, he (Lincoln) said over and over, is not what a man's particular abilities may be, but what his rights are as a human being made in God's image.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“Lincoln was equidistant from the heresy which makes a person believed that he can do nothing, and the opposite heresy which makes them suppose that he is the master of his own fate.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The key to Lincoln's famous employment of humor is not that he failed to appreciate the tragic aspects of human existence, but rather that he felt these with such keeness that some relief was required.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership

“The difficulty was not that of following a moral principle at personal cost; the difficulty was that of knowing what to do when there is more than one principal, and when the principles clash.”
― Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership