People I Really Admire: Segment One

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

affectionately known as Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, and Father Abraham. I just finished reading his biography and it reinforced my feelings of how great this man was. He is ranked as one of our three greatest presidents. It was interesting to read how this man rose from such lowly beginnings to become so politically astute, intellectually superior, and able to understand human nature so well. I wonder how the reconstruction of the South would have been different if he had lived to finish his second term. He certainly was committed to bringing the rebellious states back into the fold with as little recriminations as possible. I like these quotes about Lincoln from some his contemporaries and the author of the biography:

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Charles A Dana: "Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics because he understood human nature . . . There was no flabby philanthropy about Abraham Lincoln. He was all solid, hard, keen intelligence combined with goodness."

Horace Greely, no admirer of Lincoln in his lifetime: "He was not a born king of men . . . but a child of the people, who made himself a great persuader, therefore a leader, by dint of firm reolve, patient effort and dogged perseverance. He slowly won his way to eminence and fame by doing the work that lay next to him--doing it with all his growing might--doing it as well as he could, and learning by his failure, when failure was encountered, how to do it better. There was probably no year of his life when he was not a wiser, cooler and better man that he had been the year preceding."

Benjamin P. Thomas: "Essentially he had embodied the easygoing, sentimental, kindly spirit of America, which revolts at extreme measures, but moves steadily, if sometimes haltingly, toward lofty goals. Success had come to him, and to the nation that he served, because he had lived and governed according to its ideals."

I would like to share some of his sayings that struck a chord in me.

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From a political speech given in New York in 1859: "Let us have faith that right makes makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

From the Gettysburg Address: "But in a larger sense we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate-- we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion --that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;"

Found online: “Things may come to those who wait, but only those things left behind by those who hustle.”

My personal favorite: "When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will."

Any quotes that you especially like?