“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”

“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.”

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

“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

“you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”

“Earth without ART is just EH”  “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

“How weak and fruitless must be any word of mine.”

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth”

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

“There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.”

“Teach the children so it won't be necessary to teach the adults.”

“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.” 

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.”

“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.”