Abraham Lincoln Quotes

The real issue…is the eternal struggle between…right and wrong; the common right of humanity set against the divine right of kings…

… the imaginations of men are exceedingly prone to deify and worship them [kings]; though, to the great misfortune of mankind, they are more commonly fiends, than angels.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

We have come from the divine right of kings to the divine right of the governed.

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain little respect.

There is no middle course between the throne and the scaffold.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others.

Kings! Why, what's a king? .... Is their blood purer than our own? We are all the seed of Abraham!

The state of Monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for Kings are not only God's lieutenants, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

'Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known: Kings seek their subjects' good, tyrants their own.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.

The struggle for human rights and democracy are not always the same thing. Sometimes what you have to do is break cultural attitudes. Democracies aren’t necessarily very good at that…. It’s very hard for oppressed minorities to be given their due.

In no form of government is there an absolute identity of interest between the people and their rulers

… let them who cry up the divine right of Kings consider, that the only form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment was so far from including the idea of a King, that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations.

Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights of man will never end.

You had better have one King than five hundred.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

A British nobleman is a free man, and therefore has a right to adopt any country which is endeavoring to reestablish the rights of aggrieved humanity