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

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1069
AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (1809–65)
QUOTATION: What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
ATTRIBUTION: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858.—The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 3, p. 95 (1953).

The last two sentences appear in slightly varying form inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.”
SUBJECTS: Liberty