“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“you can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today”
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Abraham Lincoln
“if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading”
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Abraham Lincoln
“A drop of honey gathers more flies than a gallon of gall.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ... and that government of the people ... by the people ... for the people ... shall not perish from this earth.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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
“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away. it's best to let him run"
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Abraham Lincoln
“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
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Abraham Lincoln
