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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

16th U.S. President

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Famous Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Of our political revolution of '76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.”

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Book:Lincoln Speeches
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“Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father's.”

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Book:Abraham Lincoln: Quotes, Quips, and Speeches
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“I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the 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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Book:State papers, 1861-1865
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“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two yearsof age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”

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Book:The collected works of Abraham Lincoln
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“We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.”

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Book:Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln(1832-1865) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)
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“Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

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Book:Lincoln on Democracy
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“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“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.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“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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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.”

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Book:Speaking of Abraham Lincoln
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“We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. 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!”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.”

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Book:The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
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“I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity.”

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Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“Don't kneel to me, that is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.”

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Book:The Lincoln Year Book: Containing Immortal Words of Abraham Lincoln Spoken and Written on Various Occasions, Preceded by Appropriate Scripture Texts and Followed by Choice Poetic Selections for Each Day in the Year, with Special Reference to Anniversary Dates
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“As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;-let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty.”

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Book:Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings
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“The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another mans right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.”

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Book:Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings
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“Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all" the principle that clears the path for all-gives hope to all-and, by consequence, enterprize [sic], and industry to all.”

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Book:Lincoln on Democracy
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“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.”

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Book:The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)
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