The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject anything, 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 everything, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded. On this principle, the president, his friends, and the world generally, act on most subjects.
From a Speech in the US House of Representatives on Internal Improvements (June 20, 1848)
Source:
Lincoln on Democracy: His Own Words, with Essays by America's Foremost Civil War Historians. (New York, NY: A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book, HarperCollins Publishers, 1990). Eds. Mario M. Cuomo, & Harold Holzer, p. 39.
