“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by and election, neither can they take by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
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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)”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Towering genius disdains a beaten path... It sees no distinction in adding story to story... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it...”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I shall adopt new Muse as fast as they appear to be true Muse.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
―
Abraham Lincoln
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If friendship is your weakest point, then you are the strongest person in the world.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
