Allen C. Guelzo Quotes
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I suppose I've been interested in Abraham Lincoln for almost as long as I can remember. My first Lincoln book was the Classics Illustrated comic book version of the life of Lincoln, and with that, I was hooked.
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No one loves an archive better than I do. I can smell a good one half-a-block away - all that brittle papyrus dust is music to my nostrils.
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It would be pleasant to believe that some of Lincoln's DNA is actively swimming around in somebody's soup, but all the evidence is against it. And of course, there's always the risk that what we might get would be more Robert Todd Lincoln than Abraham Lincoln.
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The one who pursues revenge should dig two graves.
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It is possible to have pardon without forgiveness-a murderer can be pardoned by the governor, but that does not mean the victim's family has forgiven him. And there can be forgiveness without pardon.
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We still know so little about how the brain interacts with the body chemistry or, for that matter, whether we should be talking about the brain or the mind, that it would be perilous to hazard any guess about the way Abraham Lincoln's biological health may or may not have affected him. Of course, we don't have Lincoln on hand to ask him directly; but even if we did, we still might not be able to make sense of how all the parts worked together.
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Patriotism without criticism has no head; criticism without patriotism has no heart.
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Stephen A.Douglas was a risk-taker by temperament; I expect that Lincoln - Douglas debates represented another risk he just couldn't resist. He lived to regret it.
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The best one-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln is still Benjamin Thomas's 1952 biography. David Donald's 1995 biography is a close second, and close enough that if you can only obtain the Donald rather than the Thomas, your book club will still be doing just fine.
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It's often said that leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want, and making them think it's what they want. This captures a lot of what Abraham Lincoln did.