Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s
kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.
Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” he wrote. “I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.
We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.'