"In using the strong hand, as now..." - Quote by Abraham Lincoln

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment's sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.
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More by Abraham Lincoln

“I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“I am a moderate walker, however I never stroll back.”
— Abraham Lincoln

More on Government

“We must develop a federal program of public works, retraining, and jobs for all - so that none, white or black, will have cause to feel threatened. . . There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum and livable income for every American family.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.”
— Oscar Wilde
“A single good government becomes... a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done.”
— Thomas Jefferson

More on Justice

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“In 1694 a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." But now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp itself.”
— Henry David Thoreau