1
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
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8 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
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.
5
On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.
6
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.
7
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
8
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.