Abraham Lincoln Quotes in The Lego Movie (2014)

Abraham Lincoln: A house divided against itself... would be better than this!

[from trailer]

Abraham Lincoln: History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood. Whatever history remembers of me, if it remembers me at all, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am - a husband, a lawyer, a president - I shall always think of myself first and foremost as a hunter.

Henry Sturgess: I'd like you to chop this tree down, in a single swing.

Abraham Lincoln: That tree? It's got to be more than a foot across. That's impossible.

Henry Sturgess: But it isn't a tree. It's what you hate most in the world. So tell me, Mr. Lincoln: what do you hate?

Abraham Lincoln: I hate Jack Barts.

Henry Sturgess: [motions to the tree] Then strike him down.

[Abe swings, chopping into the tree, but fails to cut it down]

Henry Sturgess: Well, clearly you don't hate him that much. What do you *really* hate?

Abraham Lincoln: [swings, but again the tree stays upright] I hate that my mother was taken away.

Henry Sturgess: Inadequate.

Abraham Lincoln: [swings] I hate that we were afraid.

Henry Sturgess: And?

Abraham Lincoln: [swings] That my mother, father, everyone that we knew, lived in fear!

Henry Sturgess: Pathetic.

Abraham Lincoln: [swings] I hate that I was too small!

Henry Sturgess: Weak.

Abraham Lincoln: Yes!

Henry Sturgess: And that you failed.

Abraham Lincoln: Yes!

Henry Sturgess: To protect her.

Abraham Lincoln: Yes!

Henry Sturgess: That you... Let her die.

[With a roar, Abe swings, chopping straight through the trunk of the tree and toppling it to the ground. Abe looks stunned]

Henry Sturgess: Power, Lincoln, *real* power, comes not from hate, but from truth.

Abraham Lincoln: Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Henry Sturgess: [about the weapons] So, Abe... which one takes your fancy?

Abraham Lincoln: Actually, I haven't had the best luck with shooting irons.

[catches sight of an axe on a stump outside]

Abraham Lincoln: But... I was a rail splitter.

Abraham Lincoln: [after Henry has saved Abraham and Will from falling train] Thank you, Henry. I suppose... some vampires CAN be trusted.

Henry Sturgess: As can some men, Abraham.

[pauses]

Henry Sturgess: If the train was a decoy, where is the silver?

Will Johnson: This isn't the only railroad.

Abraham Lincoln: [Henry nods, Abraham grins knowingly] A wise man once taught me... always have a contingency plan.

Adam: [after Lincoln's attempt to help the slaves] Bravo, Mr. Lincoln! Bravo. You're even better then I've heard. A shame to sacrafice so many of my best men... but I needed to know if you were up to the task.

Abraham Lincoln: [being held down by Vadoma] What do you want with me?

Adam: To see you liberated. To see you rise up and destroy your oppressor.

Abraham Lincoln: [angrily] That's interesting coming from a slave owner!

Adam: Men have enslaved each other... since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.

Abraham Lincoln: [after she uses his hat to come to eye level] Miss Todd, you are a woman of ravishing resourcefulness.

Mary Todd Lincoln: Mr. Lincoln, you have no idea.

Abraham Lincoln: A great man once said, "What we do, we do not for ourselves, not for one man, but for the good of all mankind."

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire are just myths.

Henry Sturgess: Myths don't beat you senseless after you've put a bullet in their brain!

Abraham Lincoln: I'm sorry, Mary. I'm sorry I've kept you in the dark all these years... I need you, Mary.

Mary Todd Lincoln: I've waited a long time to hear you say those words.

Abraham Lincoln: My mother was murdered.

Henry Sturgess: And if I teach you how to murder her murderer... so what? How will that honor her memory? How will that benefit the next boy whose mother was taken?

Abraham Lincoln: Do you really want the truth, Mary?... Each and every night I go out... hunting vampires.

Mary Todd Lincoln: [after a moment of silence] Well, how do you hunt these vampires?

Abraham Lincoln: With an axe... a special silver axe, of course.

[Henry leads Abe to the cellar of his home, to test him on what he has learned]

Henry Sturgess: Before you protect others from darkness, you must first be able to protect yourself. Your enemies have the power to render themselves invisible. You must have the ability to fight blind. To see without seeing.

[He shuts the door, plunging the room into darkness. There are the sounds of grunts, blows landing and Abe moaning. The door opens, revealing Abe, coughing and bloody, crawling slowly towards the door as if to leave]

Abraham Lincoln: Again.

[He shuts the door]

Mary Todd Lincoln: I came to Springfield for some one different. Some whose life was a bit more adventorous, and well... My apologies. I'm never this...

Abraham Lincoln: Honest?

Mary Todd Lincoln: Rude.

Abraham Lincoln: Miss Todd, may I speak candidly? I, too, came here to better myself.

Will Johnson: [entering the store, with his back to Lincoln] A stock boy reading a law book. What? Studying to be a lawyer?

Abraham Lincoln: As a matter a fact, I am.

Will Johnson: Alright, what about a little test? What's the law for free slaves in the north?

Abraham Lincoln: According to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Enforcing Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution: "All runaway slaves must be returned to their owners." However, personal liberty laws state that: "Anyone born free cannot be taken under this act."

Will Johnson: [turning slowly] I heard a good woman once say, "Until we are all free, we're all slaves."

[first lines]

Abraham Lincoln: [voice-over in his journal] History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle and forgets the blood. Whatever history remembers of me, if it remembers anything at all, it shall only be a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am - a husband, a lawyer, a President - I shall always think of myself as a man who struggled against darkness.

Henry Sturgess: [in the bath with Gabriella as Lincoln bursts in] Might I suggest we begin by... closing the door.

Abraham Lincoln: [stammering as he backs out of the room] Y-y-yeah, I'm sorry... I didn't see anything!

Henry Sturgess: [coming out and walking through the house] Should we dive right in? Or were you finding Gabriella's egress too distracting?

Abraham Lincoln: I'm sorry, sir but who are you?

Henry Sturgess: Who I am is Henry Sturges. And where you are is my home. And what happened... I saved your life... during you rather pathetic attempt at taking another's.

Abraham Lincoln: What were you doing there and... how did you know I would try to kill Barts?

Henry Sturgess: How? I watched this boy carry out his first long-awaited mission. Drunk, I might add.

Henry Sturgess: [to Lincoln] You know I can restore the dead.

Mary Todd Lincoln: [entering the room] Do it... do it.

Abraham Lincoln: Mary...

Mary Todd Lincoln: Do it...

[to Lincoln]

Mary Todd Lincoln: Your journal... the one you always kept in your coat pocket... I know I shouldn't have, Abe, but I needed to know what you were hiding...

[to Henry]

Mary Todd Lincoln: If what you say is true, I beg you... give us our little boy back.

Abraham Lincoln: Mary, he wouldn't be our little boy. He would be something else, something terrible. Trust me, you don't want that.

Mary Todd Lincoln: You're asking me to trust you, after you lied to me for all these years?

Abraham Lincoln: I did it to protect you, to protect our family.

Henry Sturgess: You cannot take on slavery, Abraham! You cannot take on the whole south!

Abraham Lincoln: Why? Because of Adam?

Henry Sturgess: No!

Abraham Lincoln: Are you afraid of him?

Henry Sturgess: Because it is the only thing that has kept them sated all these years... and you take that away and no one is safe!

Abraham Lincoln: [in a note with his journal] I leave in your trusted hands, my dear friend Henry... this record that begins when I was just a boy.

Mary Todd Lincoln: It's called a dance. If we were meant to sit down, they would've call it something else.

Abraham Lincoln: [smiling] Yes, I suppose they would have.

Abraham Lincoln: I hate that we were afraid!

Abraham Lincoln: [repeating his journal entry] History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, and forgets the blood. However history remembers me, if it does at all, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth.

Abraham Lincoln: [in his journal] In the weeks that followed, Henry endeavored to impart a life time of vampire hunting secrets... Their ability to adapt in sunlight. Their power to render themselves invisible. But most of all, he taught me how to destroy them.

Abraham Lincoln: [in his journal] Henry sent me out into the world with a reminder. No distractions, no attachments. No friends or family.

[from trailer]

Abraham Lincoln: I shall kill them all!

Abraham Lincoln: Emancipate that ass.

Abraham Lincoln: Fourscore and...

[looks at his pocket watch]

Abraham Lincoln: seven minutes ago... we, your forefathers, were brought forth upon a most excellent adventure conceived by our new friends, Bill... and Ted. These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition which was true in my time, just as it's true today. Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!

[Captain Logan is questioning Abraham Lincoln]

Capt. Logan: All right, what's your name?

Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln. That's L-I-N-C-O-L-N.

Capt. Logan: I know how to spell Lincoln. What's your birthday, Mr. Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln: February 12... 1809.

[arriving at the White House in 1863]

Billy the Kid: Candygram!

Abraham Lincoln: Yes, what can I...

[Genghis Kahn grabs and pulls him into the phone booth]

Abraham Lincoln: Remember son, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Abraham Lincoln: If I may, you two make an adorable couple.

Larry Daley: Oh, we're not a... I mean, we're not...

Abraham Lincoln: [copying Larry] 'We're not a... I mean we're not a... ' blah, blah, blah, I never lie!

Octavius: [Approaches Kah Mun Rah, riding on a squirrel and looks up as Kah Mun Rah looks down, puzzled] Do you wish to surrender honorably, or must this end with the spilling of your blood?

Kah Mun Rah: [Looks to Larry] This? This is your big rescue?

Octavius: Oh no... this is!

[Abraham Lincoln breaks in through the wall, Kah Mun Rah and the others look up in shock]

Kah Mun Rah: What... is that thing?

Abraham Lincoln: The name is Abraham Lincoln, and you sir, are in a heap of trouble!

George Washington: I hereby award Mr. Peabody a Presidential pardon.

Abraham Lincoln: Me too!

Bill Clinton: I've done worse.

Abraham Lincoln: We'll keep the hair.

Abraham Lincoln: What's the square root of 13?

Malcolm Lucas: 3.605551...

Abraham Lincoln: A quark has six quantum flavours, right? Isospin; up, down. Bottomness. Topness. Do you know the other two?

Malcolm Lucas: Strangeness, charm.

Abraham Lincoln: I am going to tell you some of the things that happened to you. This will be called phase one. If you feel the need, respond.

Abraham Lincoln: Do you know why they took you Malcolm?

Abraham Lincoln: It was right after the revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went. 'Til one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed to this. Relieved, you might say. Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn't mention Washington's portrait. And finally his lordship couldn't resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it. The picture of Washington. He had. Well what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded. ''

[British accent]

Abraham Lincoln: "Appropriate? George Washington's likeness in a water closet?"

[normal voice]

Abraham Lincoln: "Yes," said Mr. Allen, "where it will do good service. The world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington."

[the whole room laughs]

Abraham Lincoln: I love that story.

Abraham Lincoln: I could write shorter sermons but when I get started I'm too lazy to stop.

Abraham Lincoln: [pounds his hand on a table as his cabinet squabbles] I can't listen to this anymore. I can't accomplish a goddamn thing of any worth until we cure ourselves of slavery and end this pestilential war! I wonder if any of you or anyone else knows it. I know! I need this! This amendment is that cure! We've stepped out upon the world stage now. Now! With the fate of human dignity in our hands. Blood's been spilled to afford us this moment now! Now! Now! And you grouse so and heckle and dodge about like pettifogging Tammany Hall hucksters!

Abraham Lincoln: Euclid's first common notion is this: Things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other. That's a rule of mathematical reasoning and its true because it works - has done and always will do. In his book Euclid says this is self evident. You see there it is even in that 2000 year old book of mechanical law it is the self evident truth that things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other.

Abraham Lincoln: Back when I rode the legal circuit in Illinois, I defended a woman from Metmora named Melissa Goings, 77 years-old. They said she murdered her husband, he was 83. He was choking her and she grabbed a-hold of a stick of firewood and fractured his skull and he died. In his will he wrote: 'I suspect she has killed me. If I get over it, I will have revenge.' No one was keen to see her convicted, he was that kind of husband. I asked the prosecuting attorney if I might have a short conference with my client. And she and I went into a room in the courthouse, but I alone emerged. The window in the room was found to be wide open. It was believed the old lady may have climbed out of it. I told the bailiff right before. I left her in the room she asked me where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her Tennessee. Mrs. Goings was seen no more in Metamora. Enough justice had been done; they even forgave the bondsman her bail.

John Usher: I'm afraid I don't see...

Abraham Lincoln: I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebel's slaves from them as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity. Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with'em. If in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country? And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate'em as such. So I confiscated 'em. But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still. Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, hence forward and forever free."But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done.

Abraham Lincoln: I must make my decision, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must. Hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me, you must allow me to do it. Alone, as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten the burden. Or render it intolerable. As you choose.

Abraham Lincoln: Do you think we choose the times into which we are born? Or do we fit the times we are born into?

Abraham Lincoln: Abolishing slavery by constitutional provisions settles the fate for all coming time. Not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come. Two votes stand in its way. These votes must be procured.

William Seward: We need two yeses. Three abstentions. Four yeses and one more abstention and the amendment will pass.

Abraham Lincoln: You've got a night and a day and a night; several perfectly good hours! Now get the hell out of here and get them!

James Ashley: Yes. But how?

Abraham Lincoln: Buzzard's guts, man! I am the President of the United States of America! Clothed in immense power! You will procure me these votes.

[last lines, from Second Inaugural speech]

Abraham Lincoln: Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Corporal Ira Clark: Now that white people have accustomed themselves to seeing negro men with guns fighting on their behalf, and even getting the same pay, in a few years perhaps they can abide the idea of negro lieutenants and captains. In fifty years, maybe a negro colonel. In a hundred years, the vote.

Abraham Lincoln: What will you do after the war, Corporal Clark?

Corporal Ira Clark: Work sir. Perhaps you'll hire me.

Abraham Lincoln: Perhaps I will.

Corporal Ira Clark: But you should know, sir, that I get sick at the smell of bootblack, and I cannot cut hair.

Abraham Lincoln: [grins] I've yet to find a man could make a difference with mine.

Private Harold Green: You got springy hair for a white man.

Abraham Lincoln: I do. My last barber hanged himself. And the one before that. Left me his scissors in his will.

[Lincoln's late-night cabinet meeting is interrupted by a call to drive with Mary to Ford's Theater]

Abraham Lincoln: It's time for me to go. But I would rather stay.

Abraham Lincoln: All we've done is show the world that democracy isn't chaos. That there is a great, invisible strength in a people's union. Say we've shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere. Mightn't that save at least the idea of democracy to aspire to? Eventually to become worthy of?

William Seward: Gentleman, you have a visitor.

W.N. Bilbo: [checking his friend cards] Oh my God, goddamn...

W.N. Bilbo: [President Lincoln walks in] I'll be fucked.

Abraham Lincoln: I wouldn't bet against it, Mr...?

W.N. Bilbo: W.N.Bilbo.

Abraham Lincoln: Yeah, Mr. Bilbo. Gentlemen...

Robert Latham: Sir.

W.N. Bilbo: Why are you here? No offense, but Mr. Seward's banished the very mention of your name, he won't even let us use fifty-cent pieces 'cause they got your face on 'em.

Abraham Lincoln: The Secretary of State here tells me that, uh... you got eleven Democrats in the bag. That's encouraging.

Richard Schell: Oh, you've got no cause to be encouraged. Sir. Uh...

Robert Latham: Are we being... fired?

Abraham Lincoln: [quoting Shakespeare] 'We have heard the chimes of midnight, Master Shallow.' I'm here to alert you boys that the great day of reckoning is nigh upon us.

Abraham Lincoln: [on General Grant] My trust in him is marrow deep.

Abraham Lincoln: [to Ulysses S. Grant] Each of us has made it possible for the other to do terrible things.

Abraham Lincoln: [greeting a pair of visitors from Jefferson City] I heard tell once of a Jefferson City lawyer who had a parrot that would wake him each morning crying out 'today's the day the world shall end as scripture has foretold'. And one day, the lawyer shot him for the sake of peace and quiet I presume, thus fulfilling, for the bird at least, his prophecy.

[the guests don't laugh]

[Giving a speech at a dedication, Lincoln stands beside the flagpole, and with great ceremony takes off his hat, removes a piece of paper from inside and unfolds it, then puts on his glasses]

Abraham Lincoln: [reading] The part assigned to me is to raise the flag which, if there be no fault in the machinery, I will do. And, when up, it shall be for the people to keep it up.

[takes off his glasses and re-folds the paper]

Abraham Lincoln: That's my speech.

[laughter]

James Ashley: All they heard was the first time any president has ever made mention of Negro voting.

Abraham Lincoln: Still, I wish I'd mentioned it in a better speech.

John Usher: Mr. Stevens also wants to know why you didn't make a better speech.

John Hay: Do you need company?

Abraham Lincoln: In times like these, I'm best alone.

Abraham Lincoln: [quoting a line spoken by Banquo in Shakespeare's "Macbeth"] If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me.

Tad Lincoln: Papa? Papa, I want to see Willie.

Abraham Lincoln: Me too, Tad. But we can't. Willie's gone. Three years now, he's gone.

Robert Lincoln: I have to do this! And I will do it, and I don't need your permission to enlist!

Abraham Lincoln: That same speech has been made by how many sons to how many fathers since this war began? 'I don't need your damn permission, you miserable old goat! I'm gonna enlist anyhow!' What wouldn't those numberless fathers have given to be able to say to their sons, as I say now to mine, I am commander-in-chief, so in point of fact, without my permission, you ain't enlisting in nothing, nowhere young man!

Robert Lincoln: It's mama you're scared of, not me getting killed!

Abraham Lincoln: [Lincoln slaps him, then tries to hug him; Robert pushes him away]

Robert Lincoln: I have to do this. And I will, or I will feel ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. Whether or not you fought is what matters. And not just to other people, but to myself. I won't be you, Pa. I can't do that. But I don't want to be nothing.

Abraham Lincoln: I am the president of the United States of America, clothed in immense power! You will procure me those votes!

Abraham Lincoln: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln: It's nighttime. Ship's move by some terrible power at terrific speed. And though it's imperceptible in the darkness, I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be aboard the vessel. I'm keenly aware of my aloneness.

Abraham Lincoln: [quoting Hamlet] "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

Abraham Lincoln: Hmm. I reckon it's the speed that's strange to me. I'm used to going at a deliberate pace. I should space you, Molly. I shouldn't tell you my dreams.

Mary Todd Lincoln: I don't want to be spared if you aren't And you spare me nothing.

Abraham Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they're ready to...

Thaddeus Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for. I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the *good* of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And now I look a lot worse without my wig.

Abraham Lincoln: I ought to have done it, I ought have done for Tad's sake! For everybody goddamned sake! I should've clapped you in the madhouse!

Mary Todd Lincoln: Then do it! Do it! Don't you threaten me,you do it this time! Lock me away! You'll have to, I swear if Robert is killed!

Abraham Lincoln: If we submit ourselves to law, even submit to losing freedoms, the freedom to oppress, for instance, we may discover other freedoms previously unknown to us. Had you kept faith with democratic process, as frustrating as that can be...

Judge John A. Campbell: Come sir, spare us these pieties. Did you defeat us with ballots?

Alexander Stephens: How have you held your Union together? Through democracy? How many hundreds of thousands have died during your administration? Your union, sir, is bonded in cannon fire and death.

Abraham Lincoln: It may be you're right. But say all we done is show the world that democracy isn't chaos, that there is a great invisible strength in a people's union? Say we've shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere? Mightn't that save at least the idea of democracy, to aspire to? Eventually to become worthy of? At all rates, whatever must be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now. Shall we stop this bleeding?

Abraham Lincoln: I couldn't tolerate you grieving so for Willie because I couldn't permit it in myself, though I wanted to, Mary. I wanted to crawl under the earth, into the vault with his coffin. I still do. Every day I do. Don't... talk to me about grief. I must make my decisions, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must, hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me - you must allow me to do it, alone as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten this burden, or render it intolerable. As you choose.

Abraham Lincoln: Shall we stop this bleeding?

Abraham Lincoln: Buzzards' guts, man!

Abraham Lincoln: I wish He had chosen an instrument more wieldy than the House of Representatives.

Abraham Lincoln: [Lincoln quoting Falstaff from Shakespeare's "King Henry the Fourth"] We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.

Abraham Lincoln: Liberality all around. No punishment, I don't want that. And the leaders - Jeff and the rest of 'em - if they escape, leave the country while my back's turned, that wouldn't upset me none. When peace comes it mustn't just be hangings.

Abraham Lincoln: Thunder forth, God of War!

Abraham Lincoln: Old Neptune!

[paraphrasing Shakespeare's "Macbeth"]

Abraham Lincoln: Shake thy hoary locks!

Mary Todd Lincoln: All anyone will remember of me is I was crazy and I ruined your happiness.

Abraham Lincoln: Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand, Molly.

Mary Todd Lincoln: When they look at you, at what it cost to live at the heart of this, they'll wonder at it. They'll wonder at you. They should. But they should also look at the wretched woman by your side, if they want to understand what this was truly like, for an ordinary person, for anyone other than you.

William Hutton: I can't make sense of it, what he died for. Mr. Lincoln, I hate them all, I do, all black people. I am a prejudiced man.

Abraham Lincoln: I'd change that in you if I could, but that's not why I come. I might be wrong, Mr. Hutton, but I expect... Colored people will most likely be free, and when that's so, it's simple truth that your brother's bravery, and his death, helped make it so. Only you can decide whether that's sense enough for you, or not.

Abraham Lincoln: I am asking only that you disenthrall yourself from the slave powers. I will let you know when there is an offer on my desk for surrender. There's none before us now. What's before us now, that's the vote on the Thirteenth Amendment. It's going to be so very close. You see what you can do.

Abraham Lincoln: Don't spend too much money on the flub dubs.

Thaddeus Stevens: The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.

Abraham Lincoln: I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.

Thaddeus Stevens: Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.

Abraham Lincoln: A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... what's the use of knowing true north?

John Usher: It seems to me, sir, you're describing precisely the sort of dictator the Democrats have been howling about.

James Speed: Dictators aren't susceptible to law.

John Usher: Neither is he! He just said as much! Ignoring the courts? Twisting meanings? What reins him in from, from...

Abraham Lincoln: Well, the people do that, I suppose. I signed the Emancipation Proclamation a year and half before my second election. I felt I was within my power to do it; however I also felt that I might be wrong about that; I knew the people would tell me. I gave 'em a year and half to think about it. And they re-elected me.

[pauses]

Abraham Lincoln: And come February the first, I intend to sign the Thirteenth Amendment.

Abraham Lincoln: You know, Ann, I... I've always done a lot of dreaming. And lately it seems when I dream, your face gets mixed up in it.

Ann Rutledge: Does it really, Abe? Tell me about them, Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: Well, I... I feel as though I'm going to be seeing your face 'til the day I die. Course, I know that that'll be pretty hard on you to have to look at my face that long.

Ann Rutledge: Everybody to their own opinion.

Abraham Lincoln: Hmm?

Ann Rutledge: Well, I... I think it's the dearest, kindest, most beautiful face in the whole world.

Abraham Lincoln: Oh, Ann, Ann. Course, I know that's just flattery, but I love it.

[death scene]

Ann Rutledge: I know the truth, dear. It's goodbye.

Abraham Lincoln: No, no, Ann, dear. You're not going to leave me. I won't let you!

Ann Rutledge: We must be brave, dear...

[looking up to the heavens]

Ann Rutledge: Don't take me away. Don't take me away! It's so dark and lonesome!

Abraham Lincoln: Ann, you mustn't let go.

Ann Rutledge: If they'd sing, I wouldn't be so afraid.

[a chorus of "Sweet By and By" swells up in the background]

Ann Rutledge: We will meet there, dear.

Abraham Lincoln: I've hung my hat and here it stays till they knock it off with a bayonet. From now on, Mary, I'm going to run this war!

Offut: There he is! Ugliest, laziest, smartest man in New Salem. Ain't ya, Abe?

Abraham Lincoln: Well, I don't mind my face; I'm behind it. It's the people in front that get jarred.

Abraham Lincoln: You taught me how to love.

Ann Rutledge: Have I taught you to like it?

[both laugh]

Abraham Lincoln: You know, I feel like little Jimmy Watkins. He got a hunk of gingerbread the other day and said, 'I guess there's nobody loves gingerbread like I does and gets so little of it.'

Ann Rutledge: Oh, Abe.

Abraham Lincoln: Ann, will you... will you marry me? I mean, of course, when I get out of debt and can support you?

Ann Rutledge: Well, you know, Abe, I've intended to for a long while. That is, of course, if you ask me.

Abraham Lincoln: You... you mean...?

Ann Rutledge: Yes, Abe... you've got your gingerbread.

Abraham Lincoln: [to Ann] Well, my old daddy taught me how to work, but he never taught me how to like it.

Abraham Lincoln: Miss Todd, you thought my face was funny, and the way I dressed was funnier, but the joke's on you.

Mary Todd Lincoln: Why? I don't understand.

Abraham Lincoln: Wait'll yuh dance with me.

Abraham Lincoln: [to a dying Ann] I gotta feelin' I'll be seein' your face till the day I die.

Abraham Lincoln: [to Mary] You need a lotta patience to put up with me, Mary, but if anyone can do it, I'm sure you're the one.

Abraham Lincoln: [Referring to Reconstruction] We're going to take them back as if they've never been away.

Abraham Lincoln: [discussing why he can't face Mary Todd before his marriage to her] I'd have to tell her that I have hatred for her infernal ambition. That I don't want to be ridden and driven onward and upward through life with her whip bashing me and her spurs digging in me. If her poor little soul craves importance in life let her marry Stephen Douglas. He's ambitious too. I want only to be left alone.

Sarah Bush Lincoln: Wherever you go, whatever you do, you remember what the Good Book Says: "The world passeth, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."

Abraham Lincoln: I'll remember, maw.

Abraham Lincoln: [after a particularly hysterical outburst by Mary, he comes up to her; her back is to him] Why do you take every opportunity you can to make a public fool out of me and yourself? It's bad enough when you act like that in the privacy of our own home, but here in front of people! You're not to do that again, do you hear? You're never to do that again!

Mary Todd Lincoln: [she turns to face him amazed, then] You never spoke to me like that before. You lost your temper, Abe... you've never done that before.

Abraham Lincoln: I'm sorry.

[He turns and walks away from her]

Abraham Lincoln: I still think youn should go home rather than stay here and endure the strain of this Death Watch.

Mary Todd Lincoln: [slowly goes to the door, opens it, pauses, then turns back to him] This is the night I dreamed about when I was a child... when I was an excited young girl and all the gay young gentlemen of Springfield were courting me... and I fell in love with the least likely of them. This is the night I'm waiting to hear that my husband is become President of the United States... and even if he does, it's ruined for me.

[He turns to stare at her]

Mary Todd Lincoln: It's too late.

[She slowly leaves]

Mary Todd Lincoln: [Contemptuously as she hears crowd noises from outside] Stephen Douglas has arrived. Listen to them cheering for him!

Abraham Lincoln: [Laconically] They ought to cheer. He paid 'em enough for it.

Abraham Lincoln: A house divided against itself cannot stand. The government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

Ninian Edwards: [after he withdraws from politics] What'll yuh do, Abe?

Abraham Lincoln: Judge Stuart's offered me a chance to work in his law office in Springfield. Course I don't know much about the law, but there's one thing I've learned here in politics... that ignorance is no obstacle to advancement. In fact, in some cases it's quite an advantage.

Abraham Lincoln: [to Billy Herndon] Careful. Billy, you've got great fires in yuh, but you're puttin' 'em out fast.

[Danny tells his brothers the incident with President Lincoln]

Danny: Mr. President, say, I'm gonna go hit the little boy's room.

Abraham Lincoln: Are you shitting me?

Danny: Come on, you'll be fine superstar. Can I get you something on the way back? Agua? Brewski?

Abraham Lincoln: No.

Danny: Alright. Fair enough, I'll be back in two.

John Wilkes Booth: [running into one another in the hall] Where's the president's box?

Danny: John Wilkes Booth, the actor?

John Wilkes Booth: Yeah.

Danny: No way, man! Big fan! You wanna say hi to the president? He'd get a real kick out of that. Last door on the left.

John Wilkes Booth: Thank you!

Danny: Really cool. Wow, love that guy!

Danny: [Danny is pooping when he hears a gunshot fired and women screaming] Abe!

Abraham Lincoln: Abe fuckin' Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: [Lincoln, on his policy for the defeated Southern states] I shall deal with them as though they had never been away.