“Upon the subject of education ... I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may 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.” 

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

“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”

“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

“Everybody likes compliment.

“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”

“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.”

“What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”

“And this, too, shall pass away.”

“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.”

“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

“Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

“Gold is good in it's place, but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.”

“I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.”