Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
It is rather for us 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.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.