Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States, 1809–1865. 4 explained quotes.
Lincoln's warning that the United States could not stay half slave and half free forever. He borrowed the image from the Gospels, where Jesus uses it to answer critics.
Read the full explanation →The last words of the Gettysburg Address, spoken at a cemetery for Union soldiers. Lincoln turned a funeral into a promise that the war was being fought to keep democracy itself alive.
Read the full explanation →In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln asked Americans to give thanks for good harvests and for the country's blessings, and to pray for widows, orphans and the healing of the nation.
Read the full explanation →Spoken weeks before the Civil War ended and six weeks before Lincoln was killed. He asked the winning side to heal the nation without revenge.
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About Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the Civil War, from his inauguration in March 1861 until he was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington in April 1865, days after the main Confederate army surrendered. Born in a log cabin in Kentucky and largely self-taught, he became a lawyer and politician in Illinois before his election as the first Republican president.
Lincoln wrote most of his own speeches, and he wrote them to be short. The Gettysburg Address runs to about 270 words and his second inaugural address to about 700, yet both are carved into the walls of the Lincoln Memorial. His language borrows heavily from the King James Bible and Shakespeare, which he read all his life, and that rhythm is a large part of why his lines are still quoted.
More lines by Lincoln
Short quotes checked against their sources.
- “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”Gettysburg Address, 1863
- “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”First Inaugural Address, 1861