Some Quotable Quotes from
"The Book of Insults"

God damn your god damned old hell fired god damned soul to hell god damn you and god damn your god damned family's god damned hell fired god damned soul to hell and good damnation god damn them and god damn your god damned friends to hell.

Mr Peter Muggins Letter to Abe Lincoln


I have been up to Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything, except eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.

Robert E Lee


My Dear McClellan, if you don't want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully.

A Lincoln


Major-General McClellan:

I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the Battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?

A Lincoln


If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they'd have to sleep standing up.

A Lincoln


Sending men to that army is like shovelling fleas across a barnyard - not half of them get there.

A Lincoln


What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

A Lincoln on Slavery.


His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by oiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.

A Lincoln


And on the Gettysburg Address

An offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity - Chicago Times 1863.

We did not conceive it possible that even Mr Lincoln would produce a paper so puerile, so slipshod, so loose jointed, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, it's sentiments, it's grasp. He has outdone himself; he has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it mediocrity is superb.

The Chicago times, 1863


The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found "The Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.

General George McClellan on A Lincoln


Mr Lincoln evidently knows nothing of the higher elements of human nature:.. His soul seems made of leather and incapable of making any grand or noble emotion, compared to the mass of men, he is a line of flat prose in a beautiful and spirited lyric. He lowers, he never elevates you.. when he hits against a policy.. substantially good in itself he contrives to belittle it.. besmear it in some way to render it mean.. contemptible and useless even wisdom from him seems but folly.

New York Post


Filthy story teller. Despot. Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus. Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field Butcher, Land Pirate.

Harpers Weekly on A Lincoln


The above article first appeared in the ACWS Newsletter, February 2000.