"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance."

"If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem."

"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."

"I am a slow walker, but I never walk back."

"These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have."

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."

"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."

"I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No-when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."

"Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."

"My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all."

"Fourscore 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."

"I'm a slow walker but I never walk back."

"The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them."

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

"You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve protect and defend" it."

"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."

"You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!"

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet."

"Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves."

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way."

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary."

"I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance."

"Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar."

"I can make more generals, but horses cost money."

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

"Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong."

"All I have learned, I learned from books."

"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."

"I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

"I feel like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. To the man who asked how he liked it he said: 'If it wasn't for the honour of the thing I'd rather walk.'"

"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

"Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)"

"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity."

"Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this."

"The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied."

"As our case is new, we must think 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."

"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 their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

"But for this book we could not know right from wrong."

"Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan."

"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. This is a most valuable and sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world."

"Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors."

"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."

"It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us."

"If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him."

"In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement."

"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."

"God must love the common man, he made so many of them."