“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“There can be glory in failure and despair in success.”

“...THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION;...”

“When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away. it's best to let him run"

“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 friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.”

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

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

“I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular govenment is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the govenment whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.”

“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.”

“I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable--nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery.”

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”

“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 this earth.”