Variante: Quando faccio bene mi sento bene. Quando faccio male mi sento male. Questa è la mia religione.
Abraham Lincoln frasi celebri
“La miglior cosa del futuro è che arriva un giorno alla volta.”
Origine: Citato in Focus, n. 113, p. 129
Frasi sulla vita di Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln Frasi e Citazioni
Origine: Da Discorso a Clinton, 1858.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
[Citazione errata] La prima attribuzione ad Abraham Lincoln si trova nel Golden Book magazine del novembre 1931. La citazione è stata attribuita anche a Mark Twain e in misura minore a Confucio, John Maynard Keynes e Arthur Burns. Inoltre diversi proverbi esprimono un concetto simile, tra questi ne va ricordato uno incluso nel Libro dei Proverbi della Bibbia: «Anche lo stolto, se tace, passa per saggio | e, se tien chiuse le labbra, per intelligente.». In realtà la citazione sembrerebbe appartenere a Maurice Switzer, infatti una prima traccia di questa frase si ritrova proprio nel suo libro, Mrs. Goose, Her Book del 1907. La frase viene citata anche da Lisa nel decimo episodio della quarta stagione de I Simpson.
Attribuite
Variante: Meglio tacere e dare l'impressione di essere stupidi, piuttosto che parlare e togliere ogni dubbio!
Origine: Cfr. Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/, QuoteInvestigator.com, 17 maggio 2010.
“Nessuno ha una memoria tanto buona da poter essere un perfetto bugiardo.”
Origine: Citato in Selezione dal Redear's Digest, dicembre 1962.
Origine: Citato in John D. Barrow, I numeri dell'universo, Mondadori, 2004.
Origine: Lincoln Abraham Senate document 23, Page 91. 1865.
Origine: Citato in Aldo Grasso, Il vizio antico, fuga dal carro perdente, Corriere della Sera, 11 dicembre 2016, p. 1.
“Io credo che il più grande dono che Dio ha fatto all'umanità sia la Bibbia.”
Origine: Da The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), ed. Roy P. Basler, volume VII, p. 542.
Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Il libro degli aforismi, Gribaudo, Milano, 2011, p. 268 http://books.google.it/books?id=PJKwfd6ulGMC&pg=PA268. Citato anche in Giuliana Rotondi, Tutti i gatti del presidente, Focus Storia , n. 70, agosto 2012, p. 61: «La religione di un uomo non è gran cosa se non ne traggono beneficio anche il cane e il gatto».
Origine: Dalla lettera del 4 aprile 1864 ad Albert G. Hodges, editore del Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth (riportando la loro conversazione del 26 marzo 1864). Manuscript at The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt027.html; anche in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, volume VII, p. 281.
Abraham Lincoln: Frasi in inglese
“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow (1955), Speaker's Book of Epigrams and Witticisms
Misattributed
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
Attributed in Evan Esar (1949), The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
Misattributed
“The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.”
Letter to Joseph Gillespie http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:88.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext (13 July 1849)
1840s
“I am not concerned that you fall; I am concerned that you arise.”
Attributed in Deborah Gillan Straub (1996), Native North American Voices
Misattributed
Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed
“I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
As quoted in The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln (1896) by Ida Tarbell
Posthumous attributions
Speech of the Sub-Treasury (1839), Collected Works 1:178 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln1;rgn=div1;node=lincoln1:193
Variant (misspelling): The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; and it shall not deter me.
1830s
Contesto: Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
Origine: 1860s, The Gettysburg Address (1863)
Contesto: 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Contesto: 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
“I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.”
Letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning (1 April 1838) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln1/1:134?rgn=div1;view=fulltext, Cllected Works, vol. 1. p. 119
1830s
Contesto: I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
Written speech fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln2;rgn=div1;node=lincoln2%3A547
Posthumous attributions
Recalled in a letter from Joshua Speed in Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 527 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA527&dq=%22plucked+a+thistle+and+planted+a+flower%22
Posthumous attributions
1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)