Abraham Lincoln

“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.”

“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”

“and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

“I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery.”

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

“I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union”

“We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.”

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”

“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”

“I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.”

“The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities—”

“In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, goverment ought not to interfere—”

“From this it appears that if all men were just there still would be some, though not so much need of goverment—”

“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

“It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, but hope to the world for all future time.”

“But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle—I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.”

“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope, in the world?”

“While the people remain patient, and true to themselves, no man, even in the presidential chair, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.”

“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.”

“We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”

“No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.”

“No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty—none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned.”

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”