Cultivating a Successful Work Ethic and Mentality
Important principles may and must be inflexible.
—Lincoln’s last public address; April 11, 1865
Happy day, when, all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected, mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail!
—Address to the Washington Temperance Society; February 22, 1842
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
—Letter to Isham Reavis; November 5, 1855
Of course I would have preferred success; but failing in that, I have no regrets for having rejected all advice to the contrary, and resolutely made the struggle.
—Letter to Judge S. P. Chase; April 30, 1859
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; July 10, 1848
All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
—Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions; April 6, 1858
Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; June 22, 1848
Determination and Self–Control
You can not fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; July 10, 1848
But yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any kind, without first knowing that we are able to finish them, as half- finished work generally proves to be labor lost.
—Open letter to the People of Sangamo County; March 9, 1832
Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.
—Address to the Wisconsin State Fair; September 30, 1859
Work, work, work, is the main thing.
—Letter to John M. Brockman; September 25, 1860
If anyone, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
—Fragment; written circa July 1850
Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self- interest.
—Speech given in reaction to the Dred Scott decision; June 26, 1857
It behooves you to be wide awake and actively working.
—Letter to Joseph Gillespie; July 16, 1858
Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the
burden on to the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.
—Fragment; written circa July 1854
You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.
—Letter to Maj. Gen. Hooker; January 26, 1863
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
—Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum; January 27, 1838
