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Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.
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7 quotes by Abraham Lincoln · clear filters
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in
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.