“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If friendship is your weakest point, then you are the strongest person in the world.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything.
If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Never do anything for anyone who can just as well do it themself”
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Abraham Lincoln
“A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
