“Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.”

“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”

“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”

“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.” 

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

“The written word may be man's greatest invention. It allows us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.”

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”

“Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.”

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

“Semua orang bisa tahan dengan kesengsaraan, tapi bila kau ingin mengetahui karakter seseorang, berilah dia kekuasaan.”

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

“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

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

“Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent.”

“Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.”