“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“If Abraham Lincoln were alive now, he'd roll over in his grave.”

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

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

“Towering genius disdains a beaten path... It sees no distinction in adding story to story... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it...”

“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“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.” 

“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

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

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

“The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.”

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”