“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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 the earth.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Don't give up. Come on. Just keep on trying. Don't frown. Smile! You can do it. If you just try a little harder. I've got a feeling this whole thing might just work out okay. You'll see. Don't give up. Tomorrow is a brand new day. Now I want to see all of you get up on your feet and look like you're enjoying yourselves. Come on, let's see some of that famous ‘Pennsylvania optimism’ I've heard so much about..." --from the recently discovered preamble to Gettysburg Address”
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Abraham Lincoln
“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry”
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Abraham Lincoln
“you can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
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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 not fool all of the people all of the time.”
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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
“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.”
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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
“On peut tromper une partie du peuple tout le temps et tout le peuple une partie du temps, mais on ne peut pas tromper tout le peuple tout le temps.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”
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Abraham Lincoln