One day, while listening to one of the wise men who had called at the
White House to unload a large cargo of advice, the President interjected
a remark to the effect that he had a great reverence for learning.
“This is not,” President Lincoln explained, “because I am not an
educated man. I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to
have grown up among books.”
“Men of force,” the visitor answered, “can get on pretty well without
books. They do their own thinking instead of adopting what other men
think.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lincoln, “but books serve to show a man that those
original thoughts of his aren’t very new, after all.”
This was a point the caller was not willing to debate, and so he cut his
call short.