“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”

“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.” 

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

“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.”

“Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me”

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence”

“I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

“We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help... When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.”

“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.”

“Teach the children so it won't be necessary to teach the adults.”

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

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

“The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.”

“A half effort is a wasted effort.”