“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. ”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
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Abraham Lincoln
“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. … 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. (“A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863)”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Don't give up. Come on. Just keep on trying. Don't frown. Smile! You can do it. If you just try a little harder. I've got a feeling this whole thing might just work out okay. You'll see. Don't give up. Tomorrow is a brand new day. Now I want to see all of you get up on your feet and look like you're enjoying yourselves. Come on, let's see some of that famous ‘Pennsylvania optimism’ I've heard so much about..." --from the recently discovered preamble to Gettysburg Address”
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Abraham Lincoln
“IF you are going to fight, don't let them talk you into negotiating. But, if you are going to negotiate, don't let them talk you into fighting.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”
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Abraham Lincoln
