Abraham Lincoln

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.

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.

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

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I am nothing, but truth is everything.

I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement of which I am most pleased.

I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry, shall be everywhere encouraged.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Understanding the spirit of our institutions to be that the whole of society is under the obligation of providing for the poor, the weak, and the unfortunate.

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

The Union, which can only be maintained by a strict adherence to the Declaration of Independence, and the principles of the Constitution.

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.

I am now, and always shall be, a Whig.

I have no other ambition so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

I have been elected, under the Constitution, to a four years' term; and I shall not shrink from the discharge of my duty.

I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual now-a-days to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who can talk.

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

I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.