Gettysburg Quotes

• To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.

  Robert E. Lee

  Army, Order, Soldier

  49 Copy quote

• Well, it is all over now. The battle is lost, and many of us are prisoners, many are dead, many wounded, bleeding and dying. Your Soldier lives and mourns and but for you, my darling, he would rather, a million times rather, be back there with his dead, to sleep for all time in an unknown grave.

  George Pickett

  Military, War, Sleep

  George Edward Pickett, La Salle Corbell Pickett (1913). “The Heart of a Soldier: As Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett”

  83 Copy quote

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• We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Patriotic, Civil War, Politics

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

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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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• Rations were scarcely issued, and the men about preparing supper, when rumors that the enemy had been encountered that day near Gettysburg absorbed every other interest, and very soon orders came to march forthwith to Gettysburg.

  Joshua

  Men, Order, Enemy

  79 Copy quote

• We entered Gettysburg in the afternoon, just in time to meet the enemy entering the town, and in good season to drive him back before his getting a foothold.

  John Buford

  Enemy, Entering, Afternoon

  34 Copy quote

• 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, Endure

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

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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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• I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg.

  Michael Shaara

  Wall, Distance, Believe

  "Fictional character: Lieutenant General James Longstreet". "Gettysburg", www.imdb.com. October 8, 1993.

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• That old man...had my division massacred at Gettysburg!

  George Pickett

  War, Men, Division

  Richard F. Selcer, George E. Pickett (1995). “"Faithfully and forever your soldier": Gen. George E. Pickett, CSA”

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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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• It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.

  Robert E. Lee

  Memorial Day, Peace, War

  Attributed; after the battle of Fredericksburg, December 1862

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• When I left Springfield [to become President] I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Christian, Son, People

  27 Copy quote

• If you go to Gettysburg and take the time, maybe take a tour, maybe just drive around, read some of the monuments, read some of the plaques, you will come away changed.

  Jeff Shaara

  Changed, Monument, Ifs

  "Author Shaara's Pilgrimage To Civil War Sites". Interview with Linda Wertheimer, www.npr.org. April 24, 2011.

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• The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand.

  Russell Baker

  Peace, War, Hero

  Russell Baker (1992). “Poor Russell's almanac”

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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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• There are times when a corps commander's life does not count.

  Winfield Scott Hancock

  Civil War, Doe, Commanders

  "Fictional character: Major General Winfield Scott Hancock". "Gettysburg", www.imdb.com. 1993.

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• Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.

  William Faulkner

  Understanding, Born, Cant

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

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• What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew. The war was about a new birth of freedom.

  Bruce Catton

  War, Struggle, Rights

  12 Copy quote

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

  Ernest Hemingway

  Prose Writing, Addresses, Brevity

  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. 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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• May we all, as a nation of believers, fight for the achievement of America, may we make sacrifices worthy of those proud men and women who fought for us, labored for us, bled soil from the beaches of Normandy to the fields of Gettysburg for us.

  Cory Booker

  Beach, Fighting, Sacrifice

  "Brick Towers" by Cory Booker, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 11, 2005.

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

  Leo Rosten

  Addresses, Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, Paint

  14 Copy quote

• I remember working on movies like Gettysburg and feeling that Jeff Daniels was kind of a mentor.

  Donal Logue

  Feelings, Mentor, Kind

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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