America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

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

It is better to stay silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

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

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.

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

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. Letter to Henry L Pierce and others (6 April 1859)

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. Letter to George Robertson (15 August 1855)

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war! Lincoln's supposed greeting, in 1862, to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came... Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Second Inaugural Address (1865)

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.