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

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”

“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built.”

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

“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.” 

“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”

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

“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”

“Don't give up. Come on. Just keep on trying. Don't frown. Smile! You can do it. If you just try a little harder. I've got a feeling this whole thing might just work out okay. You'll see. Don't give up. Tomorrow is a brand new day. Now I want to see all of you get up on your feet and look like you're enjoying yourselves. Come on, let's see some of that famous ‘Pennsylvania optimism’ I've heard so much about..." [Excerpted from the recently discovered preamble to Gettysburg Address]”

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”

“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.”

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”

“Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way.”