“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

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

“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.” 

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

“in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”

“Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.”

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

“Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.”

“I will not say that we may not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the time has not yet come, and if we are true to ourselves, may never come. Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November, and fire ballots at them in return; and by that peaceful policy, I believe we shall ultimately win.”

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...”

“No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. ”

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction ... nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”