“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.” 

“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.”

“The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.”

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction ... nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

“The inclination to share thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature.If in pain I wish to let you know it,and ask your sympathy and assistance;and my pleasurable emotions also,I wish to communicate to,and share with you.”

“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. ”

“Fourscore 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.”

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“I do the very best I can, I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If I'm wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won't make a difference.”

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”

“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”

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

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to  succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”