The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we mustrise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Peace will come soon and come to stay, and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have to be proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their cases and pay the cost.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of man, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.