Robert Lyon > Robert's Quotes

“Lincoln enhanced the ability of his audience to hear him by his practice of speaking slowly.”
― Ronald C. White Jr., The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend” it.”
― Ronald C. White Jr., The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words

“I, Abraham Lincoln, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Never, before or since, has there been such congruence between a speech addressing the meaning of the oath and the taking of the oath.”
― Ronald C. White Jr., The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words

“AN EARLY FOUNDATION of Lincoln’s ability to speak was laid in his reading of William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution.”
― Ronald C. White Jr., The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words