• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
• A house divided against itself cannot stand.
• If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.
• Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
• I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
• Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature – opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
• If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
• In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.
• This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.
• I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.
• The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.
• Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.
