Frasi di Abraham Lincoln (654 frasi, pagina 17)

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.

Silenzio , Divertente

“Nessuno ha una memoria tanto buona da poter essere un perfetto bugiardo.”

Abraham Lincoln

Origine: Citato in Selezione dal Redear's Digest, dicembre 1962.

Memoria

“Io devo studiare sodo e preparare me stesso perché prima o poi verrà il mio momento.”

Abraham Lincoln

“I dogmi di un passato tranquillo sono inadeguati al presente tempestoso. La situazione è irta di difficoltà, e noi dobbiamo essere all'altezza della situazione. Poiché il nostro caso è nuovo, dobbiamo pensare in modo nuovo e agire in modo nuovo. Dobbiamo emanciparci.”

Abraham Lincoln

Origine: Citato in John D. Barrow, I numeri dell'universo, Mondadori, 2004.

Modo , Passato

“Il Governo dovrebbe creare, emettere e far circolare tutta la valuta ed il credito necessario per soddisfare il potere di vendita del Governo ed il potere d'acquisto dei Cittadini consumatori. Il privilegio di creare ed emettere moneta non è solo la suprema prerogativa del Governo, ma è anche la sua più grande opportunità creativa. Con l'adozione di questi princìpi, ai Contribuenti saranno risparmiate enormi quantità di interessi. Il denaro cesserà di essere il padrone e diventerà il servitore dell'Umanità.”

Abraham Lincoln

Origine: Lincoln Abraham Senate document 23, Page 91. 1865.

Sul denaro , Opportunità

“[La democrazia è il] governo del popolo, dal popolo, per il popolo.”

Abraham Lincoln

Democrazia

“Io non so chi fu mio nonno; mi importa molto di più sapere chi sarà suo nipote.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Tutti gli uomini nascono uguali, però è l'ultima volta in cui lo sono.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sugli uomini

“[All'insegnante del figlio] Cerchi di dare a mio figlio la forza per non seguire la massa, anche se tutti saltano sul carro del vincitore.”

Abraham Lincoln

Origine: Citato in Aldo Grasso, Il vizio antico, fuga dal carro perdente, Corriere della Sera, 11 dicembre 2016, p. 1.

figlie

“Dobbiamo avere fede nel fatto che siano i diritti a conferire il potere.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sulla fede

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Il matrimonio non è né paradiso né inferno, è semplicemente purgatorio.”

Abraham Lincoln

Inferno , Sul matrimonio

“Io credo che il più grande dono che Dio ha fatto all'umanità sia la Bibbia.”

Abraham Lincoln

Origine: Da The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press, 1953), ed. Roy P. Basler, volume VII, p. 542.

Su Dio

“Quel che importa non è vincere o perdere, ma accettare serenamente la sconfitta.”

Abraham Lincoln

“La religione di un uomo non vale molto se non ne traggono beneficio anche il suo cane e il suo gatto.”

Abraham Lincoln

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».

Sulla religione

“Non affermo di aver controllato gli eventi, anzi confesso in tutta sincerità di essere stato controllato dagli eventi.”

Abraham Lincoln

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.

Sincerità

“[Incontrando Harriet Beecher Stowe] Allora, tu sei la piccola signora che ha causato questa grande guerra.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sulla guerra

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Guarda la grandezza di questo argomento!”

Abraham Lincoln

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Dichiaro di non avere controllato gli eventi, ma confesso chiaramente che gli eventi hanno controllato me.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Con la cattura finisce il piacere della caccia.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sul piacere

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Chiunque farà per te, ma non per me. Io devo avere.”

Abraham Lincoln

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Determina che la cosa può e deve essere fatta, e quindi troveremo la strada.”

Abraham Lincoln

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Questa lotta è troppo grande per farti deviare da qualsiasi piccola questione.”

Abraham Lincoln

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Tatto: la capacità di descrivere gli altri nel modo in cui loro vedono se stessi.”

Abraham Lincoln

Modo

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Essere con un leader quando ha ragione, rimanere con lui quando ha ancora ragione, ma lasciarlo quando ha torto.”

Abraham Lincoln

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Ho sempre scoperto che la misericordia porta frutti più ricchi della giustizia rigorosa.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sulla giustizia

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

“Quasi tutti gli uomini possono resistere alle avversità, ma se vuoi testare il carattere di un uomo, dagli potere.”

Abraham Lincoln

Sugli uomini

Abraham Lincoln: Frasi in inglese

“From the first appearance of man upon the earth, down to very recent times, the words "stranger" and "enemy" were quite or almost, synonymous. Long after civilized nations had defined robbery and murder as high crimes, and had affixed severe punishments to them, when practiced among and upon their own people respectively, it was deemed no offence, but even meritorious, to rob, and murder, and enslave strangers, whether as nations or as individuals. Even yet, this has not totally disappeared. The man of the highest moral cultivation, in spite of all which abstract principle can do, likes him whom he does know, much better than him whom he does not know. To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy, and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations, or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief — resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (1 July 1850), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, Vol. 2 (1894)
1850s

“The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

“The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?”

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Abraham Lincoln

Origine: 1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

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Abraham Lincoln

First Debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates http://www.bartleby.com/251/ of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858). Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. During the war which followed his election he eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in those states in rebellion against the union, arguably as a war measure rather than as an entirely political or moral initiative.
1850s, Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)

“Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Speech at Springfield, Illinois (26 June 1857)
1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)

“Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Letter to Alexander H. Stephens (1860)

“I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress on (15 April 1861) http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/proc-1.htm
1860s

“When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Quoted by Charles A. Dana in his book [http://books.google.com/books?id=rxpCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA274&q=elephant
1860s

“What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each state, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same state; and withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive, and inflexible plan can be safely prescribed as to details and colatterals. Such exclusive, and inflexible plan, would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Last public address (1865)

“Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougeism as this?”

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Abraham Lincoln

Fragments: Notes for Speeches, September 1859, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) Vol. III; No transcripts or reports exist indicating that he ever actually used this expression in any of his speeches.
1850s

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)

“Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

“Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Speech at Chicago (1858)

“In law it is a good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Letter to former Illinois Attorney General Usher F. Linder (20 February 1848)
1840s

“In the present "situation" as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action will be proper.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Last public address (1865)

“To do this the constitutional administration of our government must be sustained, and I beg of you not to allow your minds or your hearts to be diverted from the support of all necessary measures for that purpose, by any miserable picayune arguments addressed to your pockets, or inflammatory appeals made to your passions or your prejudices.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to One Hundred Forty-eighth Ohio Regiment (1864)

“From this place he removed to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the autumn of 1816. Abraham then being in his eighth year. …though very young, was large for his age, and had an ax put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument — less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, A Short Autobiography (1860)

“I think very much of the people, as an old friend said he thought of woman. He said when he lost his first wife, who had been a great help to him in his business, he thought he was ruined — that he could never find another to fill her place. At length, however, he married another, who he found did quite as well as the first, and that his opinion now was that any woman would do well who was well done by. So I think of the whole people of this nation — they will ever do well if well done by. We will try to do well by them in all parts of the country, North and South, with entire confidence that all will be well with all of us.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Remarks at Bloomington, Illinois (21 November 1860); published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 143
1860s

“My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Letter to Judge J. A. Wakefield, after the death of Lincoln's son Willie in 1862, as cited in Abraham Lincoln: was he a Christian? (1893), p. 292 http://books.google.com/books?id=x8BHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA292&dq=%22unsoundness+of+the+Christian+scheme%22, by John Eleazer Remsburg. Historian Merrill Daniel Peterson states in Lincoln in American Memory (1994), p. 227 http://books.google.com/books?id=D_FjY_ARcGoC&lpg=PA227&vq=%22Judge%20J.%20A.%20Wakefield%22&pg=PA227, that the letter has never actually been produced to verify the statement and that there's no correspondence with Wakefield noted in the Collected Works.
Misattributed

“As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar —
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Canto I
1840s, My Childhood's Home I See Again (1844 - 1846)

“Stop, you political tramp. You, the aider and abettor of those who have brought all this ruin upon your country, without the courage to risk your person in defense of the principles you profess to espouse! A fellow who stood by to gather up the loaves and fishes, if any should fall to you! A man who had no principles in the North, and took none South with him! A political hyena who robbed the graves of the dead, and adopted their language as his own! You talk of the North cutting the throats of the Southern people. You have all cut your own throats, and, unfortunately, have cut many of those of the North. Miserable impostor, vile intruder! Go, before I forget myself and the high position I hold! Go, I tell you, and don't desecrate this national vessel another minute!”

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Abraham Lincoln

To Duff Green, aboard the USS Malvern http://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1865-04-04&r=L0NhbGVuZGFyWWVhci5hc3B4P3llYXI9MTg2NSZyPUwwTmhiR1Z1WkdGeUxtRnpjSGc9 (4 April 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://archive.org/details/incidentsanecdot00portiala (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 308
1860s

“By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority — reconstruction — which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with. No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1860s, Last public address (1865)

“If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.”

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Abraham Lincoln

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. 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!”

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Abraham Lincoln

Upon proclaiming a National Fast Day (30 March 1863)
1860s

“When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus.”

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Abraham Lincoln

This anecdote apparently dates from 1864 Massachusetts Sunday School Teachers' Convention.
This has been portrayed to have been Lincoln's "reply" to an unnamed Illinois clergyman when asked if he loved Jesus, as quoted in The Lincoln Memorial Album — Immortelles (1882) edited by Osborn H. Oldroyd [New York: G.W. Carleton & Co. p. 366 http://books.google.com/books?id=pX5DEhCM9M0C&pg=RA10-PA366&lpg=RA10-PA366&dq=%22and+saw+the+graves+of+thousands+of+our+soldiers%22&source=web&ots=Alddnu8KL8&sig=IhhhPHp6tuB7FoiRI8c71w5NUH4#PRA10-PA365,M1
This incident must have appeared in print immediately after Lincoln's death, for I find it quoted in memorial addresses of May, 1865. Mr Oldroyd has endeavored to learn for me in what paper he found it and on whose authority it rests, but without result. He does not remember where he found it. It is inherently improbable, and rests on no adequate testimony. It ought to be wholly disregarded. The earliest reference I have found to the story in which Lincoln is alleged to have said to an unnamed Illinois minister, "I do love Jesus" is in a sermon preached in the Baptist Church of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, April 19, 1865, by Rev. W. W. Whitcomb, which was published in the Oshkosh Northwestern, April 21, 1865, and in 1907 issued in pamphlet form by John E. Burton.
William Eleazar Barton (1920) The Soul of Abraham Lincoln http://books.google.com/books?id=UDEOAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA208&lpg=RA1-PA208&dq=%22and+saw+the+graves+of+thousands+of+our+soldiers%22&source=web&ots=kDphIXKsy-&sig=GclPy5wecnvSuGHYO2R1bhb6lUQ. Further discussion appears in They Never Said It (1989) by Paul F. Boller & John George, p. 91.
Disputed

“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it 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.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Alledgedly from a speech to the Illinois House of Representatives (18 December 1840) its called "a remarkable piece of spurious Lincolniana" by Merrill D. Peterson: Lincoln in American Memory. Oxford UP 1995, books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=EADk9ZIMJXEC&q=prohibitory#v=page. Cf.Spurious archive.org https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnqulinc_41 and Harry Miller Lydenberg: Lincoln and Prohibition, Blazes on a Zigzag Trail. Proceedings Of The American Antiquarian Society, No. 1/1952 pdf http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44807229.pdf.
Misattributed