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Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 734
AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (1809–65)
QUOTATION: There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to Representative ABRAHAM LINCOLN.—W. T. Roche, address at Washington, Kansas, April 9, 1942: “These words were spoken by Lincoln, then a Congressman, in defense of his condemnation of President Polk for provoking the Mexican War.”—Congressional Record, April 15, 1942, vol. 88, Appendix, p. A1493. Not found in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953).
SUBJECTS: Government