“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”

“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.”

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” 

“The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.”

“The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.”

“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”

“And I like a mouse who has taken a cat for its tutor.”

“Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.”

“you can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors”

“I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular govenment is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the govenment whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.”

“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

“He whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers, has declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand”