Lincoln replied that he was more than willing to die, but that he had “done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to c… - Doris Kearns Goodwin

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.

Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth. More important than what happened to them was how they responded to these reversals, how they managed in various ways to put themselves back together, how these watershed experiences at first impeded, then deepened, and finally and decisively molded their leadership.

it was not only the executive’s right but his responsibility “to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.