No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.

This sentence is widely attributed to Abraham Lincoln in connection with his antislavery politics in the 1850s, especially arguments that slavery violates the core democratic principle of government by consent. It is often linked (sometimes loosely) to Lincoln’s speeches and writings during the Kansas–Nebraska controversy and the rise of the Republican Party, when he repeatedly framed slavery as an attempt to rule one person by another’s will. However, the exact occasion and wording are difficult to pin down from Lincoln’s authenticated texts, and the line frequently circulates in later compilations without a precise contemporaneous citation.

The quotation condenses a democratic axiom: legitimate political authority requires the consent of the governed. Lincoln’s phrasing also functions as a moral indictment of slavery and other forms of coercive hierarchy, implying that no person possesses inherent superiority sufficient to justify ruling another as property or subject. The line links personal dignity to political legitimacy—government is not merely a matter of power but of right. In Lincoln’s broader thought, this principle underwrites both constitutional self-government and the ethical claim that freedom is the default condition, while domination must justify itself and, in this case, cannot.