Greatest American president, iconclast, skeptic, self-educated lawyer and congressman opposed to the Mexican–American War whose opposition to the expansion of slavery caused 7 slave states to form the Confederacy when he was elected president; Lincoln skillfully maneuvered between “War and Anti-War Democrats” who wanted to compromise with the South, “Radical Republicans” who wanted to harshly punish the South, fixated secessionists, and British interventionists. His oratory and common sense helped guide the USA through its biggest political and moral crisis while abolishing slavery, preserving the Union, and modernizing the economy. Using the army to protect escaped slaves, he closely supervised the war and planned a compassionate rebuilding of the South until his assassination.
Lineages
American (USA) Christian Politicians
Gettysburg Address
Illinois Legislature, 1837
Speech (1865)
“I’m a slow walker but I never walk back.”
Chapters:
59. The Gardening of Spirit
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“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
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“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
Chapters:
53. Shameless Thieves
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“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
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“I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”
Chapters:
38. Fruit Over Flowers
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“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.”
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“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
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“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”
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“Message to his son’s teacher: 'Teach him the wonder of books but also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside. Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.'”
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“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Chapters:
15. Inscrutability
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“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
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“Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”
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“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”
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“Capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people.”
from Illinois Legislature, 1837
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“This Johnson is a queer man”
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“Here comes my friend Douglass!”
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“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
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“I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
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“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side.”
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“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong... I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world... causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty”
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“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory.”
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“We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.”
from Speech (1865)
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“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
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“Trade embodies the principle of liberty. Trade planted America and destroyed Feudalism; it makes peace, keeps peace, and will destroy slavery. It destroyed the old aristocracy and created a new one but this one is based on merit instead of entitlement and is continually falling like the waves of the sea.”
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“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 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
from Gettysburg Address
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“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.”
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“While Abraham Lincoln will not go down to posterity as Abraham the Great, or as Abraham the Wise, or as Abraham the Eloquent,—although he is all three—wise, great, and eloquent—he will go down to posterity as Honest Abraham... and going down thus, his name may be written anywhere in this wide world of ours, side by side with that of Washington... He treated me as a man... He did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins.”
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“Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way tip from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character, without exceptional importance-an average person of good will, was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and social organization, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!”
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“The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them... He was very wise in the ways of men. He knew that deeper than anything else in the hearts of men everywhere is the wish for simple freedom- freedom without any promises even of protection, of food, of security- just freedom.”
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“Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed. Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, 'All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse.'”
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“Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.”
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“Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln... we regard them as heroes because they also lived and acted in relation to something that transcends and transforms the human condition. Each had his weaknesses, his defects, his doubts; but in each of them [there was] another greater force... they were heroes in the ancient sense of the term.”
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“What would Lincoln have been without the Civil War? Just another railroad lawyer!”
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“hallmarks of Lincoln's greatness were his ability to grow and his willingness to change his mind.”
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“In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. but no one will ever have as much character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”
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“O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done…
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
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“No President can be great, or even fit for office, if he attempts to accommodate to injustice to maintain his political balance... it was this same attitude that made it possible for Lincoln to speak a kind word about the South during the Civil War when feeling was most bitter. Asked by a shocked bystander how he could do this, Lincoln said, 'Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?' This is the power of redemptive love.”
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“Although Lincoln may be the most quoted American of all time, I believe that John Stuart Mill is the writer most quoted by other writers.”
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“Lincoln takes his place in a long march of those poets who expose us to our deepest self-contradictions... his Second Inaugural, far from being a celebration of victory, is an admission of national culpability: we ascribed to ourselves an authority we do not properly have.”
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