That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well. - Abraham Lincoln

I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience — to reject all progress — all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

My childhood's home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There's pleasure in it too.

My parents were both born in Virginia of undistinguished families... My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks...