Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Lincoln’s personality was the North’s secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variable that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity, a fully individuated man who attained a level of consciousness unrivaled in the history of American public life. He managed to be strong-willed without being willful, righteous without being self-righteous, and moral without being moralistic. Most politicians, indeed, most people, are dominated by their own petty egos. They take things personally, try to dominate one another, waste time and energy on feuds and vendettas, project their unacceptable qualities onto others, displace anger and rage, and put the needs of their own clamorous egos above all other considerations. A dramatic exception to this pattern, Lincoln achieved a kind of balance and wholeness that led one psychologist to remark that he had more “psychological honesty” than anyone since Christ.214 If one considers Christ as a psychological paradigm, the analogy is apt. (In 1866, John Hay stated flatly that “Lincoln with all his foibles, is the greatest character since Christ.”)215”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Wendell Phillips’s namesake, Wendell Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, regretted that Pillsbury, Foster, and Phillips were inclined “to distrust everybody, to endeavor by every ingenious device to find evidence that the government is the enemy of the black man & every officer under it unworthy to be trusted.” He disapproved of their “[c]austic criticism, snap judgments, & wholesale asseveration,” as well as their tendency to have “only eyes for the shadows of the night & do not see the flood of daylight which is driving the blackness away.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“he became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity. His presence and his leadership inspired his contemporaries; his life story can do the same for generations to come.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Leo Tolstoy’s tribute, given during an interview in 1909, provides moving testimony to the universality of Lincoln’s fame. The Russian novelist admired Lincoln’s “peculiar moral power” and “the greatness of his character.” Lincoln, he said, “was what Beethoven was in music, Dante in poetry, Raphael in painting, and Christ in the philosophy of life.” No political leader matched Lincoln, in Tolstoy’s judgment: “Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.” Lincoln “lived and died a hero, and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives. May his life long bless humanity!”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Gentlemen, my hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God, and when events are very threatening and prospects very dark, I still hope that in some way which man can not see all will be well in the end.”136”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“At 7:22 A.M., the president finally stopped breathing. “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton said tearfully.128”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Applause interrupted Lincoln after he said: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” A long cheer made Lincoln pause before saying, “and the war came.”195 The final paragraph brought tears to many eyes.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”193”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“law is the indispensable condition of Liberty.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Though the danger was great, it would not have justified suspending or canceling the election. In remarking on the bitter canvass, Lincoln added: “The strife of the election is but human-nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case, must ever recur in similar cases. Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Reinhold Niebuhr expressed in his “serenity prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Lincoln chided him gently: “It is much better not to be led from the region of reason into that of hot blood, by imputing to public men motives which they do not avow.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“The field was open to them to have enlisted & put down this rebellion by force of arms, by concilliation, long before the present policy was inaugurated. There have been men who have proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson & Olustee to their masters to conciliate the South. I should be damned in time & in eternity for so doing. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends & enemies, come what will. My enemies say I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is & will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done. Freedom has given us the control of 200,000 able bodied men, born & raised on southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has sub[t]racted from the strength of our enemies, & instead of alienating the south from us, there are evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our own & rebel soldiers. My enemies condemn my emancipation policy. Let them prove by the history of this war, that we can restore the Union without it.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“But despite his courteous, self-abnegating manner and self-deprecating humor, Lincoln had a deep-rooted sense of self that lent him dignity, strength, and confidence. These qualities were perhaps interpreted as arrogance by Hay, who may have projected onto Lincoln some of his own extreme self-regard.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery failing after enormous exertions and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“In an eloquent conclusion, Lincoln meditated on the larger significance of the war: “Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.”143”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“If a cartman’s horse ran away,” the president continued, “all the men and women in the streets thought they could do better than the driver, and so it was with the management of the army.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Blood, he said, “can not restore blood, and government should not act for revenge.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“opponents of emancipation lobbied the president. Among them was the Rev. Dr. Byron Sunderland, who told him: “We are full of faith and prayer that you will make a clean sweep for the Right.” With an expression half-sad and half-shrewd, Lincoln replied: “Doctor, it’s very hard sometimes to know what is right! You pray often and honestly, but so do those people across the lines. They pray and all their preachers pray devoutly. You and I do not think them justified in praying for their objects, but they pray earnestly, no doubt! If you and I had our own way, doctor, we would settle this war without bloodshed, but Providence permits blood to be shed. It’s hard to tell what Providence wants of us. Sometimes we, ourselves, are more humane than the Divine Mercy seems to us to be.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Lincoln did allow a brief postponement of Gordon’s execution, but nothing more. He counseled the prisoner to relinquish “all expectation of pardon by Human Authority” and “refer himself alone to the mercy of the common God and Father of all men.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“In exercising his new-found assertiveness, Lincoln continued to face a daunting challenge in McClellan. Getting him to move proved as difficult as ever. Among the general’s chief defects were the ones that he mistakenly ascribed to Robert E. Lee, who, Little Mac alleged, “is too cautious & weak under grave responsibility” and “wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid & irresolute in action.”21 This assessment is a classic example of the psychological mechanism of projection—accusing others of having one’s own flaws.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“the fact is that the pioneer in any movement is not generally the best man to carry that movement to a successful issue.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Lincoln’s most controversial act was authorizing General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, thus allowing the government to arrest and detain persons without charges.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“he spoke of the present crisis with that solemn, earnest composure, which is a sign of a soul not easily perturbed.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“Lincoln may have been willing to accept war because he believed, as he told Orville H. Browning in February 1861, “far less evil & bloodshed would result from an effort to maintain the Union and the Constitution, than from disruption and the formation of two confederacies[.]”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“In March 1865, Lincoln succinctly analyzed the outbreak of hostilities: “Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life

“The attack on Sumter proved to be a major blunder, for it outraged and unified the North while dampening pro-Confederate sympathy in the Border States.”
― Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life