Quotes & Sayings About Lincoln Leadership

Lincoln on Grant: He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move. — Abraham Lincoln

Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody. — Abraham Lincoln

I assume, gladly, that in the allocation to America of remarkable leaders like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, the Lord was just as careful. After all, if you've got only one Abraham Lincoln, you'd better put him in that point in history when he's most needed-much as some of us might like to have him now. — Neal A. Maxwell

Lincoln was a master of small group theatrics. — Richard Brookhiser

Lincoln did not admire those who think it is a mark of sophistication to sneer at patriotism. He believed that God has a will for a country and that is honest man should rejoice in the effort to try to remake his country after the Divine pattern, insofar as that pattern is revealed to him. — Elton Trueblood

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president. — David Herbert Donald

Lincoln said his spiky hair had "a way of getting up in the world". — Harold Holzer

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there. — Shelby Foote

I shall adopt new Muse as fast as they appear to be true Muse. — Abraham Lincoln

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson - the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. [The World Is My Home (1991)] — James A. Michener

It is most remarkable that Lincoln, when he saw so much that was vulnerable in the leadership of the Church, did not move to the opposite error and become a scoffer. — Elton Trueblood

Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It's this. He's thinking that he can't win the war if he doesn't keep the people on his side. He's thinking that he can't keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population - raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he's thinking that it doesn't matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he'll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn't matter to him very much who he executes; one man's agony is like another's, one mother's tears are no wetter than anybody else's. And that's why he's going to have Sam shot. — James Lincoln Collier

Today the Republican Party attracts neither the farmer nor the industrial worker. Why not? To represent the people one must know them. Lincoln did. The Republican Party leadership does not. The greatest praise I can give Lincoln on this his anniversary is to say he would be ashamed of his party's leadership today. - 1938 — George David Aiken

The best way to predict future is to create it. Abraham Lincoln — Gary Chapman

We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's? — Thomas Frank

Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress. This is the approach that gave the world, leaders of glorious characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Subhas Chandra Bose (the actual man behind India's Independence), Vasil Levski (the man who liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman oppression), Nelson Mandela and many more. These people were technically politicians too, but unlike the majority of the politicians of
modern society, their approach to politics was what it should be in a real system of politics. — Abhijit Naskar

Lincoln gives a lesson in adaptive leadership even to those of us who will never advocate for compensated emancipation. Facing an uproar over the cost of the government paying slaveholders for their slaves, Lincoln showed the COST OF THE STATUS QUO, which is generally overlooked by those who oppose change. — Harold Holzer

In the South, there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln. — W.E.B. Du Bois

From the prophets of Israel Lincoln had learned the note will idea that there can be serving people, with responsibility to the entire "family of man". — Elton Trueblood

Abraham Lincoln was asked by an aide about the church service he had attended. Lincoln responded that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent and the topic relevant. The aide said, "Then it was a good service?"
Lincoln responded, "No." The aide protested,
"But, Mr. President, you said that the minister was inspired, interesting, well-prepared, eloquent, and that the topic was relevant."
"Yes," replied Lincoln, "but he didn't challenge us to do any great thing. — Abraham Lincoln

One longs for the presence of a leader like Lincoln, who openly admitted his doubts and as openly preserved his commitment. — Rollo May

John Hay on Lincoln: "He always worked with things as they were, while never relinquishing the desire to make them better. — John Taliaferro

Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong. — Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people. — Steven Spielberg

Why do we universally admire and respect a Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa, Lincoln, or any other leader or legend from history's pantheon? It is because they were guided by integrity-based practices. They stood for something. They didn't break with the values they believed in just because they faced struggle. — Brendon Burchard

I am a man who believes with all fervor and intensity in moderate progress. Too often men who believe in moderation believe in it only moderately and tepidly and leave fervor to the extremists of the two sides - the extremists of reaction and the extremists of progress. Washington, Lincoln ... are men who, to my mind, stand as the types of what wide, progressive leadership should be. — Theodore Roosevelt

The press-savy Lincoln looked not to the future, but to the past. — Harold Holzer

One-time rival and subsequent usurper Secretary of State Seward finally settled into an assessment of Lincoln that, His confidence and compassion increase every day. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on — Abraham Lincoln