Things Lincoln never said

[David Lockmiller]

(02-03-2014 09:49 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Bill, I just did a search of "The Collected Works" and drew a blank on this one. I've seen this quote on the Internet attributed to Lincoln but never with a source.

By doing a Google search of the entire quotation, I found the following entry in the introduction to the book, "Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln," edited by Don and Virginia Fehrenbacher:

“For more than a century, undocumented quotations have been attaching themselves to Lincoln and gaining currency through repetition. Many of them are undoubtedly spurious. There appears to be no credible evidence, for example, that he ever said: ‘Tact [is] the ability to describe others as they see themselves.’”

The Fehrenbacher’s added within the same paragraph: “In addition, there are many quotations vaguely linked to him by anonymous narrative, contemporary gossip, family tradition, and other tenuous connections. Such is the case, for instance, with his supposed greeting of Harriet Beecher Stowe as ‘the little woman who made this great war.’” Unfortunately, this quote is in the book by Emanuel Hertz, "Lincoln Talks, a Biography in Anecdote," without qualification as to authenticity.