“Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way.”
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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
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...”
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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
“The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Stand with anyone that is right; stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
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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
“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
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us
from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
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Abraham Lincoln
