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Subscribe to The Achievement Digest Lincoln On The Power Of Positive Thinking Lincoln's "Public Opinion Baths" "I feel--though the tax on my time is heavy--that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official--not to say arbitrary--in their ideas, and are apter and apter with each passing day to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity. Now this is all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions of all who claim to have business with me twice each week, and every applicant for audience has to take his turn, as if waiting to be shaved in the barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of more or less importance, and all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which at the end of two years I must return. I tell you that I call these receptions my 'public opinion baths;' for I have but little time to read the papers, and gather public opinion that way; and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty."
LEARN MORE ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN KEYNOTE AND
SEMINAR ON
LEADERSHIP "Careers, like symphonies and books, cannot be fully evaluated until they
are finished. The more unconventional a symphony, a book, or a life, the less
obvious its ending." Lincoln’s life was always a work in progress. Had he died even a year earlier, historians today would probably call him a well-meaning but tragic figure. Without a last-minute success on the battlefield, Lincoln would have been defeated at the polls. He had even written out plans for the transition. His successor would probably have ended the war by recognizing the Confederacy, thereby dismantling the Union and leaving slavery in place. But a major last-minute victory did come at Atlanta, and Lincoln sealed his place in history. Shortly before Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, he lamented the loss of his associates who had invented the United States. "All, all dead," Jefferson despaired shortly before his death, "and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not and who knows not us." He could not have known that, at that very moment, a young rustic on the Indiana frontier was getting to know him. Who indeed could have predicted that the barely literate youth would grow up and engrave Jefferson’s words on the hearts of the world at Gettysburg? Nor could Jefferson have known that the great American experiment would survive, or that this boy, inspired by his words, would play such a central part in preserving it. When Lincoln visited the Confederate capital of Richmond shortly after it fell, he stayed for only a few hours. It was clear that the Union had been preserved and slavery was no more. The nation was being reborn. On his return to Washington aboard the steamboat River Queen, the
President read poetry to some of his friends. One of the passages was from
Macbeth, his favorite of all Shakespeare’s plays. Little did he realize
the eerie significance it would have for his own life. Six days later, Lincoln was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. Like
Duncan, nothing could touch him further. His voice was silenced. But still
he speaks."
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Books and Videos By Gene
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Gene Griessman's Lincoln performance before an audience of over 20,000 at the Georgia Dome. CLICK HERE TO ORDER
"One of the very best
videos/DVDs ever made. It's a classic like 'Gone With the
Wind."
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