“I will not say that we may not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the time has not yet come, and if we are true to ourselves, may never come. Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November, and fire ballots at them in return; and by that peaceful policy, I believe we shall ultimately win.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”
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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
“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come.”
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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
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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 this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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Abraham Lincoln
