“Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.”

“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.” 

“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

“Everybody likes compliment.

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

“And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour  of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”

“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”

“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”

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

“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...”

“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. ”