“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”

“Force is all conquering, but it's victories are short lived.”

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition... I have no other so great as that of being truely esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.”

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

“A half effort is a wasted effort.”

“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.”

“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 would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.”

“The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

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

“One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.”