Gettysburg Quotes - Page 2

• Few generals were as brilliant as Robert E. Lee and few battles as titanic -- and puzzling -- as Gettysburg. Why did Lee fail? In Lost Triumph, Tom Carhart offers a bold and provocative new assessment. Agree or disagree, it is sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs.

  Jay Winik

  War, Assessment, Battle

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• Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg. And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years,and passengers ask the conductor- What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

  Carl Sandburg

  War, Years, Two

  "Grass" l. 7 (1918)

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• As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Dedication, Ideas, Two

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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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• I think if you'd had television cameras at Gettysburg, this would be two nations today. People would not have put up with that carnage if they saw it up close. We'd have elected McClellan in 1864.

  George Will

  Thinking, Two Nations, Media

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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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• 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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• You don't go to Gettysburg with a shovel, you don't take belt buckles off the Arizona.

  Robert Ballard

  Arizona, Belt Buckles, Belts

  “Erin Burnett Outfront”, www.cnn.com. April 6, 2012.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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 crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga.

  Jim Wright

  Rain, Rivers, Water

  Jim Wright (1966). “The Coming Water Famine”, New York : Coward-McCann

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• In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?

  Roy H. Williams

  Prayer, Writing, Boys

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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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• I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.

  Jerry Spinelli

  War, Writing, College

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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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• The first time I heard Ron Whitehead read I felt what I imagine those who heard Abraham Lincoln deliver The Gettysburg Address felt.

  David Amram

  Addresses, Firsts, Imagine

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• The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Determination, War

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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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• Of the people, by the people, for the people.

  Sun Yat-sen

  4th Of July, Patriotic, Democracies Have

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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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• When I read that I had to go to Gettysburg.

  Dave Barry

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• Battles that involve oatmeal are just never going to end up being historic, you know?" Jake went on. "Gettysburg? No major oatmeal involvement. The Battle of Midway? Neither side used oatmeal. Desert Storm? No oatmeal.

  Katherine Applegate

  Oatmeal, Storm, Battle

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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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