“But for this book we could not know right from wrong.”

“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.” 

“A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded cannot be safely disregarded.”

“I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.”

“I am nothing, truth is everything.”

“The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”

“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”

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

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that this continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

“I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

“I would just as soon die now, but I haven't done anything yet to be remembered by”

“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”