Abraham Lincoln One‑Liners from His “Fragment: Notes for Speeches,” 1858

Life-sized statues of both Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas
(by noted sculptor, Lily Tolpo)
depicting their debate at Freeport, Illinois on August 27, 1858.

This fragment of notes for speeches in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln is a treasure-trove of one-liners. It shows Lincoln completely unvarnished. He’s sarcastic, morally furious, legally precise, and funny in a way only a frontier lawyer could be. 

There’s no marble here, no mythmaking—just a man figuring out how to dismantle his debate adversary, Stephen Douglas with logic, contempt, and deadpan humor. This is the Lincoln who jokes that trying to reason with his adversary is like 'preaching Christianity to a grizzly bear.' These are sentences sharper than knives, written by a man who is clearly done playing games.

Read on and enjoy the view from Lincoln’s back room on the eve of the 1858 debates.

From “Fragment: Notes for Speeches,” c. Aug. 21, 1858 (Collected Works, Vol. II, pp. 547–553).

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1. “...not by argument, but by mere burlesque on the art and name of argument — by such fantastic arrangements of words as prove ‘horse‑chestnuts to be chestnut horses.’”

Lincoln’s perfect demolition of Douglas’s verbal gymnastics — a whole logic lesson in one joke.

2. “The susceptable [sic] young hear lessons from him, such as their fathers never heard when they were young.”

A quiet, chilling line about political contagion.

3. “Judge Douglas has a greater conscience than most men.”

Lincoln flatters him the way a cat “flatters” a mouse.

4. “He might very well go out of the Senate on his qualifications as a false prophet.”

A biblical‑sounding insult delivered with lawyerly calm.

5. “I call him, and take a default upon him.”

Courtroom humor — and somehow it lands like a punchline.

6. “It only makes him the dupe, instead of a principal, of conspirators.”

Lincoln’s version of “you’re not one of the leaders, just a gullible follower.”

7. “I might as well preach Christianity to a grizzly bear...”

Frontier deadpan at its finest — and devastatingly dismissive.

8. “He remembers to forget it.”

A perfect, six‑word indictment.

9. “...he cooks up two or three issues upon points not discussed by me at all, and then authoritatively announces that these are to be the issues of the campaign.”

Lincoln calling out Douglas for inventing arguments or "disinformation" as we call it today.

10. “Public sentiment is every thing.”

A political philosophy distilled to five words.

11. “Whoever moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”

A Lincoln masterclass on the real power in politics. Today, we call them "influencers".

12. “...he who affirms what he does not know to be true falsifies as much as he who affirms what he does know to be false...”

Lincoln’s moral geometry — crisp, cold, and airtight.

13. “And then — the slave being doomed, and damned, and forgotten, to everlasting bondage — is the white man quite certain that the tyrant demon will not turn upon him too?”

A warning wrapped in a prophecy — and chillingly prescient.

14. “Still I have the right to prove the conspiracy, even against his answer...”

Lincoln reminding Douglas that denial is not a defense.

15. “From warp to woof, his handiwork is everywhere woven in.”

A metaphor from the textile industry that quietly accuses Douglas of being in the fabric of the scheme.

16. “...he is conscientious... he is more conscientious... he is most conscientious... he is absolutely bursting with conscience.”

Lincoln building a staircase of sarcasm and then kicking Douglas down every step.

From the archives of Abraham Lincoln. Storyteller.

Mac