“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.”
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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
“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where.... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.”
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Abraham Lincoln