Abraham Lincoln's Greatest Speeches and Quotes Worth Hanging on Your Wall

Lincoln wrote better than almost anyone who has ever held political office. Here are his greatest speeches and the quotes that still stop you cold.

The Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)

Two hundred and seventy-two words. Ten sentences. Delivered in roughly two minutes at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four months after the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. The Gettysburg Address is the finest piece of American political prose — a redefinition of the war not as a struggle to preserve a union but as a test of whether the idea of human equality could survive.

The most-quoted passage: "Four score 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." And the close: "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)

Many historians consider the Second Inaugural the greater achievement. Delivered five weeks before the war's end, when Lincoln could have claimed triumphant vindication, he instead offered something closer to theology. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" — a closing that still reads as the highest expression of what American leadership can aspire to.

Quotes That Belong on a Wall

"Whatever you are, be a good one." Clean, direct, and almost impossible to argue with. Works in any room.

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." (Often attributed to Lincoln; the exact source is disputed, but the sentiment is consistent with his character and his documented writings.)

"I am a slow walker, but I never walk back." One of the most underused Lincoln quotes — concise, defiant, and deeply American.

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar." Sharp-edged and funny. Works well in a study or law office.

"I would rather be a little nobody, than to be an evil somebody." Lincoln's self-deprecating wit at its best.

The Face That Defines American Grief

Matthew Brady and his studio photographers turned Lincoln into the most-photographed man of the nineteenth century. The progression of his face across those photographs — from the relatively unlined 1860 images to the carved and exhausted visage of 1865 — is itself a document of what the presidency cost. A Lincoln portrait print carries all of that weight. It belongs in rooms where serious things happen.

See our Epic Quotes collection for Lincoln typography prints and our American Greatness portraits for Lincoln canvas art.

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