Timeless Advice from President Lincoln--The Importance of Respecting Others

 

President Lincoln had a deep belief in the importance of respecting other people in the quest to achieve productive outcomes.  He was an enemy of self-satisfaction and any “know it all” attitude.   

As author Jon Meacham writes, Lincoln believed that to hector or condemn another person, to tell them that they are wholly wrong, was not a path to agreement or reform but to intransigencies. 

 

“If you would win a man to your cause,” Lincoln wrote, “first convince him that you are his sincere friend.  Therein this drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to reach and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment to the justice of your cause.  On the contrary, assuming to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart and although your cause be naked truth itself, transformed with the heaviest lance…you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a  straw.”  

We so need to honor this truth today. We have to stop shouting at each other; vilifying one another. In our domestic politics. In our foreign relations. Even sometimes in our families.