You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

As a nation we began by declaring that all me are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.

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 is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.

We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free.