“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

“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”

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

“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.” 

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

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

“You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

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

“Avoid popularity if you would have peace”

“There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.”

“I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.”

“You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”

“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”