“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

“Never do anything for anyone who can just as well do it themself”

“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”

“if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“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 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.”

“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

“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.”

“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 am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expose their quarrels on either side…allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.”

“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.”

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”