“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by and election, neither can they take by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.”

“I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.”

“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

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

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

“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 have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence”

“To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.”

“Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.”

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

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

“If you think you can you can, if you think you can't you're right!”

“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.”