“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; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Abraham Lincoln
Second Inaugural Address (Primary source)
Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address as President of the United States on March 4, 1865, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., as the Civil War was drawing to a close.
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“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; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln
“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“We here 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.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.”
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“Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Disputed“He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceCharity Love American Civil War