Gettysburg Address Quotes

• It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Law, Addresses

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.594, Simon and Schuster

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• it wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Prose Writing, Addresses, Gettysburg

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.594, Simon and Schuster

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• The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Unfinished Work, Long

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Long, Gettysburg

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863

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• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Change, Happiness

  Declaration of Independence (1776).

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• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  4th Of July, Patriotic, America

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1.322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26.911 words. The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

  Oscar Wilde

  Prayer, Government, Differences

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• It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Civil War, Tasks, Lasts

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• Four score 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.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Change, Freedom, Father

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863

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• As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address.

  Jeremy Denk

  Finals, Movement, Thumbs

  "Every Good Boy Does Fine" by Jeremy Denk, www.newyorker.com. April 8, 2013.

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• [T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fighting, Government, People

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• I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

  Edward Everett

  War, Ideas, Two

  Svend Petersen, Edward Everett (1963). “The Gettysburg addresses: the story of two orations”

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• The nation was founded and "dedicated," to use Lincoln's language in the "Gettysburg Address," to equality as a "self-evident truth." But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a "proposition." To make it a reality remained "the unfinished work" of Americans.

  Ronald Takaki

  Reality, Unfinished Work, Self

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• But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

  Abraham Lincoln

  4th Of July, Men, Long

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• If you look at photos of the Gettysburg Address there's a guy off to the right who I think is Keith Richards.

  Dave Barry

  Thinking, Guy, Looks

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.

  David McIntosh

  Prayer, Humorous, Government

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• The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren

  Sarah Vowell

  Reading, Warrior, Men

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• People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.

  Neil Postman

  Law, Plain Language, People

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.46, Penguin

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• If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.

  Leo Rosten

  Addresses, Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, Paint

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• That we we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Patriotic, Government

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• A recent government publication on the marketing of cabbage contains, according to one report, 26,941 words. It is noteworthy in this regard that the Gettysburg Address contains a mere 279 words while the Lord's Prayer comprises but 67.

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Prayer, Men, Marketing

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• The omission of an expected conjunction is called an asyndeton. Caesar is supposed to have said about Gaul: I came, I saw, I conquered. Lincoln concluded the Gettysburg Address, That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Caesar seems to have omitted his conjunction to speed things up; he is emphasizing how quickly the conquest of a place follows from its being sighted by a great and ambitious general. Lincoln's omission is more subtle

  Arthur Quinn

  Government, Omission, People

  Arthur Quinn (2012). “Figures of Speech: 60 Ways To Turn A Phrase”, p.7, Routledge

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• Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln wrote it on his way to the site of the speech on the back of an envelope. One guy on the back of an envelope wrote the great Gettysburg Address - while every night it takes six guys to write this crap!

  David Letterman

  Writing, Night, Guy

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• One unexpectedly striking moment, when Tom Amandes as Lincoln, recites the Gettysburg Address, not in booming, this-is-a-great-speech style, but casually, as if chatting over dinner. The approach elevates the words.

  Neil Genzlinger

  Style, Addresses, Speech

  "The Man Who Protected Lincoln" by Neil Genzlinger, www.nytimes.com. February 14, 2013.

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• On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.

  H. Allen Smith

  Monday, Morning, 4th Of July

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