The Wit And Wisdom Of Abraham Lincoln (Ebook)

It is not a myth that Lincoln was wise and witty: his phrasings are alive, quick, clear, and powerful. “It is very common in this country to find great facility of expression and less common to find great lucidity of thought,” he told a British journalist. “The combination of the two in one person is very uncommon; but whenever you do find it, you have a great man.”

Lincoln himself developed that “combination,” and he rose to become our “great man.” As a
public man, he seems to have been generally consistent in his views on slavery, the law, and morality. Though I have distributed his statements into various broad categories, few of the quotations could not have found an appropriate home in another category or two.

I have tried to limit this selection to
quotations that were characteristic rather than odd or exceptional and to rely on those statements that were more or less self explanatory. I have arranged the quotations chronologically within their categories, with the undatable remarks placed thematically.