“Abraham Lincoln, the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War, was the true representative of this people not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men; a man who embodied the qualities of his fellow men, but who embodied them to the highest and most unusual degree of perfection; who embodied all that there was in the nation of courage, of wisdom, of gentle patient kindliness, and of common sense.

And great, sad, patient Lincoln led us to victory from '61 to '65 because he did not trust to any mere trick or device because he drove deep down to the heart of thousands and based his reliance on the fundamental virtues of mankind–the old virtues of mankind.

That is the spirit we have to show in facing the problems of today. If we approach those problems in a spirit of hysteria, we will fail as we well deserve to fail, if we approach them in a spirit of envy and rancor and malice toward our fellows. We will not only fail, but we will drag them and us in a common ruin.”
Tagged: Will

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.