I will either be America's greatest president or its last.

Every man has a right to be equal with every other man.

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.

As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.

It is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.