If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
ATTRIBUTION:
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), U.S. president. speech, Jan. 27, 1837, Springfield, Illinois. The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953).
