1
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Abraham Lincolnverified·Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, Illinois·February 22, 1842
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7 quotes by Abraham Lincoln · clear filters
2
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
3
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government,--that is despotism.
4
His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.
5
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
6
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.
7
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.