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We better know there is a fire whence we see much smoke rising than we could know it by one or two witnesses swearing to it. The witnesses may commit perjury, but the smoke cannot.

Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln
Age: 56 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1865
Died: April 15
16Th U.S. President
Farmer
Lawyer
Military Officer
Politician
Postmaster
Statesperson
Hodgenville
Kentucky
Honest Abe
A. Lincoln
President Lincoln
Abe Lincoln
Lincoln
Uncle Abe
Fire
Perjury
Two
Swearing
Cannot
Witnesses
May
Whence
Better
Rising
Much
Witness
Smoke
Commit

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The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.
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The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.
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I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.
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The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.
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A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
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Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one...or a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God.
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Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.
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If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.
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I do the very best I can, I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If I'm wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won't make a difference.
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You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
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All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
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Lincoln called laughter the joyous, beautiful, universal evergreen of life.
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Government, possessing the power to create and issue currency and credit as money and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as a means of financing government work and public enterprises.
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Great men are ordinary men with extra ordinary determination.
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Nevertheless, amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance on God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right.
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Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.
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Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.
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Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail... A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.
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My policy is to have no policy.
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Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln