“you can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors”

“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.” 

“Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.”

“Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”

“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 laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all. ”

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”

“And I like a mouse who has taken a cat for its tutor.”

“Life is hard but so very beautiful”

“Without the assistance of that divine being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, remain with you and be everywhere for good let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.”

“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”

“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander”

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

“You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.”