• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• 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.
• I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
• We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.
• 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.
• I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me – and I think He has – I believe I am ready.
• In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
• In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.
