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A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

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There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate - that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future - and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that Foreign Influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it.

The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.