Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution, there is none sadder or more striking than this — that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet

“Abraham Lincoln” (1864), My Study Windows (1871)
    (Source)