For as long as I’ve been active in conflict management, I have been confronted with a quote from Abraham Lincoln about not stirring up litigation.\u00a0 I first saw it on a pamphlet at CPR in 1998.\u00a0 Since then I have since seen it in articles, pamphlets, traning materials, mediation center literature, law school courses, PowerPoint presentations, and every other imaginable medium and context, in at least 10 different countries including China.<\/p>\n
But there’s a better one.<\/p>\n
The well-known citation comes from a document usually titled “Notes on the Practice of Law” and dated about July 1850.\u00a0 It is an admonition to young lawyers, and in addition to encouraging diligence and thoroughness, includes this passage:<\/p>\n
Discourage litigation.\u00a0 Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can.\u00a0 Point out to them how the nominal winner is often the real loser — in fees, and expenses, and waste of time.\u00a0 As a peace-maker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man.\u00a0 There will still be business enough.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The familiarity of this advice may have blunted\u00a0its freshness\u00a0and clarity.\u00a0 I found another, even more common-sense, admonition when reading (intermittently I assure you) the 10-volume biography of Lincoln published in 1890 by his trusted secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.\u00a0 While directed to a young man in private,\u00a0the advice\u00a0seems entirely appropriate — indeed logically compelling — to commercial decision making as well.<\/p>\n
It seems that a young officer was to be court-martialed for quarelling with one of his associates, and it was Lincoln’s task to prepare a reprimand.\u00a0 In a mixture of self-taught Shakespeare, small-town congeniality, and plain common sense, he wrote:<\/p>\n
The advice of a father to his son, “Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee!” is good, but not the best.\u00a0 Quarrel not at all.\u00a0 No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.\u00a0 Still less can he afford to take all of the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control.\u00a0 Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones though clearly your own.\u00a0 Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right.\u00a0 Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Is it too much of a stretch to replace the\u00a0reference to\u00a0the\u00a0“man resolved to make the most of himself” with the “company resolved to maximize shareholder value”?<\/p>\n
Nicolay and Hay wrote that these words reveal “the principles which ruled the conduct” of our greatest president.\u00a0 They also suggested that the passage “deserves to be written in letters of gold on the walls of every [high school] and college.”<\/p>\n
As the former Governor of Alaska would say, You betcha!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lesser-known quote from Abraham Lincoln concerning the virtues of conflict avoidance proves more compelling than his oft-cited admonition on avoiding litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution","tag-conflict-management"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}