I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
Abraham Lincoln
The meaning of the quote
On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln stood up in the Illinois State House in Springfield to accept his party’s nomination for the US Senate. In that speech, now known as the House Divided speech, he said his rival Stephen Douglas believed a man has every right to be wiser today than yesterday and to change when he finds out he was wrong.
The quote turns that belief into a test anyone can run. Each night, ask yourself whether you know more than you did when you woke up.
Lincoln tied getting wiser to changing your mind once you find out you were wrong, and that’s the harder half. Learning a new word costs you nothing, but admitting an old opinion was wrong costs you a bit of pride.
Lincoln held himself to that test as president. In August 1862, newspaper editor Horace Greeley attacked him in the New York Tribune for moving too slowly on ending slavery. He answered with a public letter.
“I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Horace Greeley
In his first inaugural address in March 1861, he had promised not to touch slavery in the states where it already existed. By the summer of 1862, a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation sat in his desk drawer, and he signed the final version on January 1, 1863.
Jeff Bezos noticed the same pattern in business. In 2012, the Amazon founder spent about 2 hours answering questions at the office of the software company 37signals. Co-founder Jason Fried later wrote that Bezos told them the people who are right a lot are the ones who often change their minds, while the people who are wrong a lot get stuck on details that support only one point of view.
Action steps
Lincoln’s test takes a few minutes a day. Done every day, it works like James Clear’s idea of getting 1% better every day.
- Write down one lesson from today.
A new fact counts, and so does a mistake you won’t make again. - Say “I was wrong” out loud.
When someone shows you a better answer, admit it on the spot instead of arguing to save face. - Look back once a month.
Read your notes and find one opinion you’ve changed. If you can’t find one, ask someone who disagrees with you to explain why, and listen.
If you go to bed knowing one lesson you didn’t know this morning, you’ve passed Lincoln’s test.
About the author
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. He had less than a year of formal schooling, so he taught himself by reading whatever books he could borrow.
At 23, he bought half of a general store in New Salem, Illinois, on credit. Customers were few, so he read behind the counter. At the bottom of an old barrel he found a full set of Blackstone’s Commentaries, the law books he later used to teach himself to be a lawyer.
The store failed and left him with debts he jokingly called his “national debt.” He was still paying it off in 1848, while serving in Congress.
In 1858, the year of his House Divided speech, he lost the Senate race to Stephen Douglas. In 1860, he beat Douglas and 2 other candidates to become the 16th president of the United States, and he led the country through the Civil War until he was assassinated in April 1865.
Horace Greeley, the editor who attacked him in 1862, later said in a lecture that there was probably no year of Lincoln’s life when he wasn’t wiser than the year before. Even his critic thought Lincoln passed the test.
The line Lincoln spoke in Springfield in 1858 was later shortened into the quote, which you can find in the book Portrait Life of Lincoln by Francis Trevelyan Miller, published in 1910.
Resources
- House Divided speech, June 16, 1858 (Article)
- Letter to Horace Greeley (Article)
- Some advice from Jeff Bezos (Article)
- Think Again by Adam Grant (Book)
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Book)
- Atomic Habits (Book summary)
- Abraham Lincoln (Wikipedia)
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