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What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
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5 quotes by Abraham Lincoln · clear filters
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time
Attribution contested
No contemporaneous record of Lincoln saying this survives. It first appears in recollections published decades after his death, and has also been credited to P. T. Barnum. Even the wording is unstable: this is McClure's 1901 text, which differs from the version usually quoted today. Treat the phrasing as the compiler's, not Lincoln's.