“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
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
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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
“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
“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.”
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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
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that this continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“IF you are going to fight, don't let them talk you into negotiating. But, if you are going to negotiate, don't let them talk you into fighting.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung”
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Abraham Lincoln
“There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.”
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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
“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
“...THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION;...”
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Abraham Lincoln
