“If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.”
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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
“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.”
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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
“If Friendship is your weakest point, you are the strongest person in the world.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.”
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Abraham Lincoln
