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About this quote

What does it mean?
Lincoln warns that ignoring law and replacing courts with mobs threatens justice.
In plain terms
He fears people are ignoring courts and using mobs instead.
What can you take from it?
Respect the law to keep justice.

Where it applies

  • civil rights issues
  • legal reform

Putting it to work

  • support legal processes
  • oppose vigilante justice

Questions to consider

  • When is breaking the law acceptable?
  • How do you ensure justice?

Another view

Sometimes laws themselves may be unjust.

More from Abraham Lincoln

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  2. When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions,…

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  3. In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christia…

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