“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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
“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. ”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down upon my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His, and our cause His cause, that we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. Then and there I made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him, and He did stand by you boys, and I will stand by him. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands, and things would go right at Gettysburg, and that was why I had no fears about you.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“He whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers, has declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand”
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Abraham Lincoln
“And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in GOD, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.
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Abraham Lincoln
“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.”
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Abraham Lincoln
