"Strip the proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans, send forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plow, and you will thus humble proud traitors."
"I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.'"
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Source: Thaddeus Stevens (1997). “The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1: April 1865-August 1868”, p.524, University of Pittsburgh Pre
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"I don’t hold with equality in all things only with equality before the law and nothing more."
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