“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”
Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller
Posthumous attributions
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Abraham Lincoln 618
16th President of the United States 1809–1865Related quotes
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)
Misattributed
Variant: A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IX, The Future Of Liberalism, p. 118.
§ IV
1910s, At the Feet of the Master (1911)
Context: Superstition is another mighty evil, and has caused much terrible cruelty. The man who is a slave to it despises others who are wiser, tries to force them to do as he does. Think of the awful slaughter produced by the superstition that animals should be sacrificed, and by the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food. Think of the treatment which superstition has meted out to the depressed classes in our beloved India, and see in that how this evil quality can breed heartless cruelty even among those who know the duty of brotherhood. Many crimes have men committed in the name of the God of Love, moved by this nightmare of superstition; be very careful therefore that no slightest trace of it remains in you.
“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.”
As quoted in Loggers' Handbook Vol. 36 (1976), p. 72; also in North Western Reporter, Second series (1992) https://books.google.com/books?id=I1KaAAAAIAAJ; similar remarks have been attributed to others, including more recent attributions to Adlai Stevenson and Abraham Lincoln.
Variant:
I insist on being smarter today than I was yesterday.
As quoted in How to Win the Meeting (1979) by Frank Snell, p. 3
