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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Abraham Lincoln (1809–65)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 561
AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (1809–65)
QUOTATION: The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
ATTRIBUTION: Representative ABRAHAM LINCOLN, remarks in the House, June 20, 1848.—The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 1, p. 484 (1953).
SUBJECTS: Evil