Top 242 Lincoln Quotes

Hoover himself had risen from the most modest means of any president since Abraham Lincoln. Orphaned as a small boy, he worked his way through Stanford‘s ‘pioneer‘ class – the first freshmen at Stanford. He started his mining career in hard labor.

When you stop to realize that Abraham Lincoln was probably never seen by more than 400 people in a single evening, and that I can enter over 40 million homes in a single evening due to the power of television, you have to admit the situation is not normal.

In Lincoln’s day a President’s religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln’s countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.

I received orders from Congress to proceed to Charleston in South Carolina, for the purpose of Co’operating with General Lincoln in the defense of that Capitol.

Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy.

I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: ‘There’s no further new material; there are only new questions.’

I am so grateful for my experience at Lincoln Center working to help relocate New York‘s largest media event – Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

The Lincoln Project is the brainchild of embittered former GOP grifters who failed to anticipate the Trump phenomenon and were not talented enough to overcome their miscalculation. Trump derangement is the only occupation open to their washed-up careers, so they are doomed forever to tilt at windmills.

Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy shared more than just being leaders during critical times and the misfortune of lives cut short. They shared a power of will to drive the nation, sometimes single-handedly, toward a destination that few but they realized was attainable.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

Too few presidents have steeped themselves not just in Lincoln’s words but his deeds, which is why Obama’s acquaintance with the great man is so compelling – especially since, like President-elect Lincoln, Obama will take office at a perilous time.

My sister was in ballet growing up. I spent almost the entirety of 7 through 12 backstage at Lincoln Center, just running around, waiting for ‘The Nutcracker’ to end.

I therefore shared fully the intense chagrin of the New York and other State delegations when, on the third ballot, Abraham Lincoln received a larger vote than Seward.

Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials – all six at once?

Moses freed the Jews. Lincoln freed the slaves. I freed the neurotics.

A great presidential address – Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Truman’s Farewell Address, Kennedy’s Inaugural Address – has the power to inspire.

People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer‘s creation.

Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation edict.

We should honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt today as the greatest commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the United States in our history, bar none – including President Lincoln.

With the Lincoln assassination, the South didn’t feel it could mourn along with the North. But Garfield was beloved by all the American people. He was trusted and respected by North and South, by freed slaves and former slave owners. Also by pioneers, which his parents had been, and by immigrants.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.

Abraham Lincoln is singular. Abraham Lincoln, before he was killed, stood up and, you know, for the first time from any sitting president, stood for the right for suffrage for African-American men who had served in the Civil War. And that’s a limited suffrage, but it was quite radical at the time.

I’m not a Lincoln expert, rather a biographer who has had the pleasure of reading much of what has been written about him from his lifetime to this year of his bicentennial. Some advice: Don’t try that unless you have at least five years available.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We’ll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

Me and a few of my rowdy friends stole the wheels and tires off a brand-new limited-edition Lincoln Mark III that my manager, Merle Kilgore, had just bought. We left it up on blocks and then we sold his own wheels and tires back to him the next day.

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.

If you think Abraham Lincoln became famous for inventing the town car, it is time to spend a few hours on history.

We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton‘s, or Abraham Lincoln’s?

Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose.

When you’re driving into D.C. as a young kid and you go over the Key Bridge and see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Capitol Building, they become a part of the landscape for you. You are also constantly in contact with this idea that history, and the people that made it, are being remembered.

Hollywood versions of watershed moments in American history are generally high-minded shlock. ‘JFK,’ ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt,’ even ‘Lincoln’: all of these boast excellent performances in scripts that are ultimately very conventional, even conservative.

I think Lincoln had a unique parenting style. He let his kids run free and wild.

What I thought we ought to try to do in a book like this is to focus closely on Lincoln, himself, to see what he knew, how he knew it, how he came to make the decisions that he did, and how he implemented them.

In the South, there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn’t have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.

Lincoln merely nominally freed the bodies of Negroes. But Debs would free the bodies and minds of Negroes.

It was this weird confrontation of these two delicious flavors that got me consciously or subconsciously combining Lincoln and vampires as an observational in-joke with myself.

Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.

As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.

The only thing that surprised me about ‘Lincoln’ is that most of the critics who reviewed the film seem not to have grasped what should have been apparent right from the start, which is that ‘Lincoln’ is at bottom a play with pictures, not a screenplay.

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating ‘Lincoln the myth.’ He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man’s president.

It is to such men as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin, all most lowly born, that we owe most of our greatness as a nation.

My record shows that I have put my country first, and I follow the philosophy and traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Seems like everybody has seen ‘Cooley High.’ That’s what put me on the map. Garrett Morris and I go way back, even before the movie. Great guy. We’ve done theater and stage plays together, Lincoln Center and all kinds of things.

If Lincoln is among history’s truly great men, he didn’t achieve that stature until his final three years. This was when his long-held antipathy to slavery cohered into a dedicated hostility that gave larger purpose to the Civil War and also confirmed the logic of Lincoln’s destiny.

As long as it served his purpose, Mr. Lincoln boldly advocated the right of Secession.

That was the miracle of Abraham Lincoln, politician. He pursued the high purpose of moving justice forward via the low arts of patronage and patronization. Indeed, in a democracy, it is usually the only way great deeds are done.

Lincoln and Clinton had a lot in common in the way they were elected: In both cases, they were dark horses. In both cases, they were from small states. In both cases, they were not the favorite for their parties‘ nomination.

Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln was the most important man to ever occupy the White House because he abolished slavery and kept the states united through a bloody civil war.

Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology.

Dealing with Jazz at Lincoln Center and its board of directors, who are so great, and then seeing how these Rock Hall guys operate, it’s like: ‘Really?’ It seems like they’re total amateurs when it comes to doing shows and contracts.

I think also there’s no question that Lincoln has been diluted down through history in some way, almost by becoming as iconic as he is, in a way he’s become diluted.

Lincoln was the Twain of our politics.

Most fourth graders can’t say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

I’ve never been on a board, but I just went on the board for Jazz at Lincoln Center. I’m very happy about that.

For us, church was kind of the way that we found our first entry into community in Arkansas. My parents would drop us off at the First Baptist Church of Lincoln so that we would make friends and we would learn English.

In 1860, the Republicans put Lincoln in the White House, and Southerners left the Union. Their absence opened the way for the new party to reshape the national government, from protecting the wealth of propertied men to promoting economic opportunity for everyone.

I had not got over the prejudice against Lincoln with which my personal contact with him in 1858 imbued me.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

‘Lincoln’ was OK; I thought it was a rock-solid eight out of 10, but it shouldn’t win all the awards.

In high school, I did the ‘The Tempest‘ at Lincoln Center for Joe Papp.

Out of the west came Lincoln, and all that he had he gave to the preservation of the Union that had been bought so dearly and was falling to pieces.

I had moved out of the Edison Hotel because I couldn’t pay the bill and was living at the Lincoln Hotel, where I couldn’t pay the bill either, but it was cheaper.

In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don’t really worry about whether it’s contemporary or not.

There are so many books out about Abraham Lincoln out now because it’s the bicentennial of his birth. I’ve known a lot about the Civil War, but I’m just getting more into it.

The ‘All My Children’ studio was near Lincoln Center, and I used to see all the ballerinas and the dancers, and I thought, I don’t want to bulk up; I want to have long, lean, toned muscles. And I found out that through Pilates, you can achieve those strong, lean dancer muscles.

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.

When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity.

The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.

EMILY’s List members are deeply committed to electing pro-choice Democratic women whom we trust to stand up for our rights, treat us honestly, and make us proud. Our candidates fight for us every day. Blanche Lincoln failed to hold up her end of the bargain.

We’ve seen it again and again. From civil rights to women’s rights to marriage rights, this country has reinvented itself in the quest to make real the transcendent values that Lincoln proclaimed in his historic address – that all men are created equal in a nation conceived in liberty.

Some have deplored Lincoln’s indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.

We believe slavery was abolished with Abraham Lincoln; unfortunately, human slavery is alive and well.

I believe in monstrosities, and ‘I Am Abraham’ is a monstrosity of sorts, raveling out moment by moment with its contrapuntal songs, as if a band of musicians were at play, all of them with Lincoln’s beard and disturbing grey eyes.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn’t a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

You can learn more about leadership by reading about Lincoln than you can from most business books.

The American tradition of Washington and Hamilton and Madison and Lincoln and TR and Pat Buchanan is of economic nationalism – making America an independent, self-sufficient, sovereign forever country that’s able to stand on its own feet.

I moved to New York City in ’92 and had no money. I had a lot of free time, as actors do. I would go to the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

Lincoln had bad press, too. He wasn’t appreciated until after he was gone.

Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached.

If he’d been negotiating Obamacare, Lincoln would have made the infamous ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ deal – $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska to secure a Senator‘s vote – in a heartbeat, even if the press howled as it did when Barack Obama agreed to it, forcing its cancellation.

A recommendation to scholars: Write only one book about Lincoln; give it your best shot, and then move on.

Debs is greater than Lincoln. Debs is the spokesman of the great struggling working class of all races, nationalities, creeds, sexes.

I grew up with three little brothers. Every Christmas, we’d have piles of toy trucks and Lincoln Logs and G.I. Joes under the tree. Those were for them. For me? My No. 1 favorite present of all time: books. Two or three tall stacks of wonderful stories that I could lose myself in for weeks.

Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman.

Our party was built upon the beliefs of President Abraham Lincoln, who took the significant step to put us on the long path for equality.

George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.

I’m not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today.

I’m not running for the U.S. Senate because I think Lincoln Chafee is a bad man.

When Lincoln ran into trouble during the Civil War, he got new generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front.

I remember my first time coming to New York City. It was 1986, and I was on a U.S. tour with a stop at Lincoln Center. It was love at first sight.

But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we’re just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship.

There is no such thing as too much rehearsal. When Daniel Day-Lewis told Steven Spielberg he needed a year for ‘Lincoln,’ I understand that.

When I come to work in this capital, I’ll visit Mr. Lincoln every day. I’ve been walking in his footsteps my entire life.

See, most films are about achievers. You see a film like ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ or ‘Dhoni.’ Even ‘Gandhi,’ or the biopic on Lincoln. They end in triumph, on a high.

Lincoln is a genius of language and a brilliant writer who deserves to be seen as part of the canon of great writers in American literature.

‘What I would give,’ I thought, ‘to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective.’

A most highly multiplying trait in point of far-reaching influences is that of ability to discover and use strong men. This trait stands out impressively in Rothschild’s ‘Lincoln, Master of Men’.

If it wasn’t for Abe Lincoln, I’d still be on the open market.

Climate change is analogous to Lincoln and slavery or Churchill and Nazism: it’s not the kind of thing where you can compromise.

The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.

It seemed like a wonderful honor to have the Film Society of Lincoln Center screen ‘The Films of Raquel Welch.’ It shows a lot of a variety in what they’ve chosen; it kind of runs the gamut of my film career.

At my first job as an independent researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, they told me I could work on most anything, but not what I knew something about. That is actually very good advice to a young person starting a career because you bring new ideas to the field.

In high school, I weighed 175 to 180. I looked like Abraham Lincoln. I was 6-foot-3, biggest thing in the class, but tall, not fat.

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

Honda opened its first assembly line in Lincoln in November 2001.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.

For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don’t know that George Washington would be a president today, I don’t know that Abe Lincoln would, I don’t know that Roosevelt would.

Lincoln’s stature and strength, his intelligence and ambition – in short, all the elements which gave him popularity among men in New Salem, rendered him equally attractive to the fair sex of that village.

What built America’s called the American system, from Hamilton to Polk to Henry Clay to Lincoln to the Roosevelts. A system of protection of our manufacturing, financial system that lends to manufacturers, OK, and the control of our borders.

I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.

Lincoln Davis has supported Nancy Pelosi’s anti-business, big government policies a disturbing 83% of the time.

I came west for opportunity. I made Lincoln my home.

Fox News has been a force in converting the party of Lincoln into the party of Trump. The network‘s allegiance to Trump approaches mindless adoration.

Struggling to end the war and to eliminate slavery once and for all by way of the 13th Amendment, with the amendment‘s prospective passage undermining the effort to make peace with the Confederacy and vice versa, Lincoln embodied the Great Man theory that leftists disdain.

I’ve always wanted to build a ’37 Lincoln Zephyr.

Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.

Lincoln was the greatest speaker and he was ridiculed for how he looked, you know?

Pelosi abuses her power in ways that once were unthinkable. Her speakership has been the antithesis of Lincoln’s entreaty to ‘the better angels of our nature.’ Everyone in Congress – and, by extension, the nation – has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere.

Cummings’ career as a writer – and a painter – was as wobbly as his love life. He tried his hand at playwriting, satirical essays, and even a dance scenario for Lincoln Kirsten.

Let’s assume for the moment that the logic behind Presidents Day is actually sound for certain presidents. Why not have a separate holiday for Lincoln and one for Washington – as we used to do, before we became so concerned with the ‘Every President Gets a Trophy‘ ethos?

At the beginning, Lincoln was so inexperienced he had reverence for military expertise, not realizing that there wasn’t any military expertise, that the most anybody had commanded up to that point had been somebody, some troops in the Mexican War, and it had been years ago.

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I’m not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, ‘God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?’ I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.

All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility.

Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics because he understood human nature.

It was August 28th, 1963, and the greatest civil rights coalition in modern history had descended upon Washington. Hundreds of thousands of protesters trekked through the heat, stretching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.

Among the roles I’ve played on stage, television and in films were politicos as diverse as Abe Lincoln, Juan Peron, Herman Goering, George Wallace and both Roosevelts.

Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public.

I could not have been happier with ‘The Lincoln Lawyer.’ They got the essence, and the casting, starting with McConaughey, was just perfect.

I love just being at Lincoln Center – it’s so New York! Those fountains!

If I have to be typecast, I’d like it to be as Abraham Lincoln.

That’s my Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, that believes America is an indispensable nation… an Evergreen Tree, standing tall in a turbulent world.

My memoirs were written, and a portion of them already in the hands of the publishers, when the startling news came which has thrilled all Europe and filled her inhabitants with horror – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it.

Abe Lincoln is my favorite president of all time – and he pulls off that top hat pretty well.

No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer.

There’s as much crookedness as you want to find. There was something Abraham Lincoln said – he’d rather trust and be disappointed than distrust and be miserable all the time. Maybe I trusted too much.

Although a madman, Norton wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria which they took seriously.

‘Lincoln’ is a powerful film. It’s one of those epic films that talk about this very specific issue in history of the United States.

I have always compared our traditions of liberty, like those of Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh.

And, finally, Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript. Though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!

The death of Mrs. Lincoln was a serious loss to her husband and children. Abraham’s sister Sarah was only eleven years old, and the tasks and cares of the little household were altogether too heavy for her years and experience.

To give credit to Lincoln for moral progression seems beyond the facts and unnecessary for our appreciation of this arguably greatest of all American presidents.

The United States is a country founded on the ideal of freedom and equality, values later underlined by key historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

If you’re going to come to D.C. and it’s your first time here, see the view from the bottom of the Washington Monument, looking out over the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln. And see the Jefferson Memorial. It’s so beautiful and such a part of the history of the city.

While Lincoln thus became a lawyer, he did not cease to remain a politician.

It was difficult to find my way into ‘I Am Abraham,’ to feel confident enough to inhabit Lincoln’s persona. I began with a prologue in a neutral voice, wrote of Lincoln at the White House with a sly young reporter quizzing him about his humble origins.

There are some extremely acceptable male comedians out there: Joel Osteen, Abraham Lincoln, the man who played Phil Spector in HBO’s ‘Phil Spector.’ But even those guys, while insightful and amusing, aren’t exactly funny.

Lincoln believed in the American people.

Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg – 272 words dedicating a cemetery at the site of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles – has been called by scholars the source of all modern political prose.

There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation.

I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further.

Lincoln has been my first love, and as always with first loves, it fixed a standard. So I scaled sunlit heights with Lincoln and produced the colossal marble head in the rotunda of the capitol of the United States.

I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600’s. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.

I’ve always been a poet. My dad went to Lincoln University with Gil-Scott Heron, so I came out of the womb listening to Gil-Scott Heron.

One decision I made in writing ‘Henry and Clara’ was that I would keep Lincoln’s appearances and any dialogue by him to an absolute minimum, because I think readers don’t quite believe it when novelists have Lincoln walking around and saying things. They just know they’re in the presence of stage machinery.

The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate, was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln’s election.

Only a crazy man would write a novel in Lincoln’s voice.

Abraham Lincoln went through 12 generals before he got Ulysses S. Grant. He had never done a Civil War before.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.

That settled Abraham Lincoln with me. I was thoroughly satisfied that no such man ought to be President; but I could not yet conceive it possible that such a monster would be the choice of a majority of the people for President.

The value of Eric Foner’s ‘The Fiery Trial’ lies in its comprehensive review of mostly familiar material; in its sensible evaluation of the full range of information already available about Abraham Lincoln and slavery; and in the deft thoroughness of its scholarship.

Now that the Court has declared money to be speech, I say we replace the current Court with some Ben Franklins, Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, a couple of Susan B. Anthony’s, Roosevelts, Hamiltons, a Sacajawea or two, and an Abe Lincoln to cover Scalia in full.

There is no disputing that Lincoln was a great man.

I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and ‘the life of the mind’ – and now, such subjects have become my life.

I’ve actually seen a good amount of the shows at Lincoln Center Theater. I went to school right across the street at Juilliard, so some of the first stuff I got to see here in New York was at the Lincoln Center Theater. I’ve always been inspired by the work that they do.

We’ve changed in the sense that we flipped – and this is no longer the Republican party of Lincoln. This is the party of suppression.

I was able to sit at Lincoln’s side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him.

The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people.

Messrs. Washington and Lincoln faced enormous difficulties, but they both gave their lives to make sure America survived.

The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level.

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs.

If you’re going to be born ugly and be an actor – the least they can do is let you play Lincoln.

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln’s single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation.

Washington and Lincoln mean as much to us as any two men could mean to a civilization, a people, and age, but I told Mr. Coolidge when he dedicated this monument that this rock is being carved with a monument that will outlive our government.

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery.

It’s Never Trumpers who deserve the most scorn, especially the inadequates from the Lincoln Project.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

John Kennedy really did extend the reach of the American people and said, like Lincoln said in a way, that our reach is farther than our grasp – and we should aim high.

Abraham Lincoln once noted that ‘the ballot is stronger than the bullet.’ Foreign adversaries, who can’t match the military, economic or diplomatic power of the U.S., understand Lincoln’s wisdom. They seek to sow chaos and confusion in our electoral process to gain an advantage over us.

I really do not like having media moderators. Lincoln and Douglass didn’t have moderators. Let the candidates ask one another questions.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Had there not been a Mary Todd, there would not have been an Abraham Lincoln. She found him when he was a young lawyer and really a bumpkin. No one knew of him, but she recognized his brilliance.

‘Lincoln’ is impressive enough to almost make you forget how much Daniel Day-Lewis dominates the endeavor.

Men like Abraham Lincoln recognized that if the slaveholders were not stopped, it would only be a question of time until they spread their system of elite rule to the entire country. Poor men would be bound for life into menial labor, and American democracy would die.

Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me.

I loved ‘Terminator 2’ as a teenager and ‘Sound of Music’ when I was a kid. I also loved ‘Requiem For A Dream’ as a college student and ‘Mulholland Drive.’ And I have loved ‘Lincoln’ as an adult. They are all the same, as they are all good stories and extraordinary actors.

There is, of course, only one chosen nation. But Abraham Lincoln would call America ‘an almost chosen nation’ because he believed that America had a providential role to play in history, inspired by the example of God’s ancient covenant people.

Lincoln was not an intellectual, but no one in 200 years understood the language of the King James Bible or learned Blackstone’s Laws of England, or Cicero, or the language of the Founding Fathers, better than he did.

I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn’t it?

Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them.

If Lincoln were alive today, he’d be turning over in his grave.

Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot.

If the press really thinks Obama is Lincoln, they ought to treat him like they treated Bush, ’cause that’s how they treated Lincoln. His critics compared Lincoln to an ape; they called him an illiterate baboon.

He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.

Lincoln did more than any other man to put the stamp of righteousness, to put the stamp of compassion, on the name of America.

My back went out and I gained 40 pounds while sweating over ‘Perestroika.’ It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I had to do before the screenplay to ‘Lincoln.’

After high school, I enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but I stayed only a year and a half. I felt college was a waste of time; I wanted to start working.

My favorite thought about Abraham Lincoln is he believed in two things: loving one another and working together to make this world better.

I seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered Lincoln.

Before you give up hope, turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.

If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

I can still remember the first time I heard Tori Amos. It was the fall of 1993, and I was in the back of a colossal ’79 Lincoln Coupe Mark V, embarking on some otherwise forgettable road trip somewhere in the Deep South.

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David.

Politically I did not like Mr. Lincoln, for in him I saw the destroyer.

We’ve lost leaders from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others who have worked to bend the arc of the universe towards justice and equality. Yet, we remain undaunted, dedicated to striving for a fairer, more equal society.

Andrew Lincoln has to be the nicest, ego-less lead actor that I’ve ever met in my life. His energy and temperament just falls over everyone.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

If I was just a creator, I would still be back in the Lincoln annex in the Post Office.

The hardest role that I’ve ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in ‘Light in the Piazza’ at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I’ve ever had, but the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

I’ve enjoyed living in New York for the last 10 years, where there’s a real film culture, with the Film Forum and Lincoln Center.

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.

Obviously, ‘Lincoln’ is not about the telegraph operator. There’s a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I’m in.

Abraham Lincoln never denigrated, never scapegoated, never finger-pointed. And he had reason to.

I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman‘s dance.

When I write about Mickey Haller as the Lincoln lawyer, I totally see Matthew McConaughey because he took that character when that character was still fairly new to me – only two or three years old – when I knew McConaughey was going to play him. He’s also the same age, the right age, in comparison to the book.

Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth – more than any other American President.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

I did a play called ‘Disgraced’ in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam.

Messrs. Washington and Lincoln would be appalled and saddened by what their successor, President Obama, and the modern Democratic Party are doing to the nation they dedicated their lives to keep alive.

We can build a better, more representative democracy through technology and ensure what Abraham Lincoln called the last, best hope for Earth will endure past the 21st Century.

If the Republican party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it, not only for demographic reasons but for reasons of principle. The party of Lincoln is a party of opportunity for everyone. It’s a party about the right to rise, and Mr. Trump unfortunately doesn’t represent that view.

Sexy ain’t guys like Churchill and Lincoln.

This country owes them all a debt of gratitude. The down payment on that debt is making sure that we live up to Lincoln’s charge: to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.

You know, Lincoln was funny. I don’t think F.D.R. was very funny. But Lincoln was funny. Lincoln was really funny. But I think you should get elected first, and then show that you’re funny.

If an honest man is the noblest work of God, then Mr. Lincoln’s title to high nobility is clear and unquestioned.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it’s Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women’s rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

When I arrived in Ford, a decision was made to sell many marquee brands. This was because 85 per cent of the sales were from Ford and Lincoln brands. We were clear that for the company‘s strong future, we needed to focus on the Ford brands.

President Reagan, expanding on President Lincoln’s phrase, referred to America as ‘the last, best hope of man on Earth.’ But this last, best hope is beginning to fade.

Look at where I lived! Four blocks from Lincoln Center. I used to play in the fountain. And then I started taking dance lessons. I was in ‘The Nutcracker’ for the N.Y. City Ballet when I was 8 and dancing in ‘The Firebird’ for George Balanchine when I was 9. Believe me, that’s something you don’t ever forget.

When I came to M.I.T. in 1960, only 4 percent of the students were female. Today, it’s about 40 percent of undergraduates. At Lincoln Lab, they had 1,000 men and two women. But we had a very good boss, and he treated us just like everybody else.

I’ve visited Lincoln Park Zoo more times than I can count because I believe the more the public learns about our animals, plants and environment, the better equipped we are to play a leading role in protecting our planet.

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War.

Lincoln’s removal from New Salem to Springfield and his entrance into a law partnership with Major John T. Stuart begin a distinctively new period in his career.

I dreamed my way into Lincoln and the details that moved me – his lack of education or ‘civilized‘ manners and his deep connection to all humankind.

Even in the United States, the enslavement of African descendants continued until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. That brutal form of slavery was abolished there hardly thirty years before it was abolished in Cuba.

Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I’m a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.

‘Lincoln’ was a very sacred workplace. Everyone did a lot of research for that movie and wanted to show up informed and ready to enter that world.

It didn’t occur to me that it was possible to breathe life into Abraham Lincoln.