Abraham Lincoln Quotes About Liberty

• We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Freedom, Men, Democracies Have

• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wisdom, Religious, Freedom

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others, 6 Apr. 1859

• Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Veterans Day, Our Veterans, Us Veterans

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.86, Fordham Univ Press

• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wisdom, Freedom, Humor

  "Definition of Democracy," ca. 1 Aug. 1858

• I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Believe, Men, Rights

  Abraham Lincoln (1982). “Abraham Lincoln, wisdom & wit”, Peter Pauper Pr

• Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Weed, Men, Blow

• As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Freedom, Taken

  Letter to Joshua F. Speed, 24 Aug. 1855

• The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Bible, Christian, Book

• We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

  Abraham Lincoln

  Freedom, Humility, Heart

  "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln".

• The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Sheep, Agreement, Civil War

  Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md., 18 Apr. 1864

• We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Party, Mean

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.1338, Jazzybee Verlag

• Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wise, Father, Pursuit Of Happiness

• Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Liberty, Desert

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.25, Fordham Univ Press

• Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, 4th Of July, Law

  Abraham Lincoln (2009). “The Portable Abraham Lincoln”, p.35, Penguin

• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Libertarian Party, Liberty, Politics

  Martin D. Tullai, Abraham Lincoln (1998). “Speaking of Abraham Lincoln”

• If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Views, Numbers, Liberty

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1861

• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  4th Of July, Patriotic, America

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

• My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Lying, Men, Justice

  Address on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, delivered 16 October 1854, Peoria, Illinois

• It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty, for yourselves, and not for me. I desire they shall be constitutionally preserved.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Desire, Liberty, Unions

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.194, Wildside Press LLC

• If the American people could learn what I know of the fierce hatred of the priests of Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights, and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them out as traitors.

  Abraham Lincoln

  School, Rights, Rome

• A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Weed, Blow, Marijuana

• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Doors, Land

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations”, p.3, Courier Corporation

• Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south - let all Americans - let all lovers of liberty everywhere - join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Blessed, Practice, People

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.276, Wildside Press LLC

• I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Children, Cutting, Opportunity

You May Also Like:

George Washington

John F. Kennedy

John Wilkes Booth

Theodore Roosevelt

Thomas Jefferson

Mary Todd Lincoln

Barack Obama