Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

“he whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers, has declared that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand.’

Lincoln understood that the greatest challenge for a leader in a democratic society is to educate public opinion. “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed,” he said. “Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”

“He is blowing out the moral lights around us,” Lincoln warned, borrowing a phrase from his hero Henry Clay, “eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people.”