In an age of instant judgment and algorithmic polarization, a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln circulates constantly through social media, corporate training seminars, and self-help literature: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” This phrase has become a kind of philosophical antidote to the modern impulse to dismiss, block, and move on. It appears on LinkedIn posts about workplace diversity, in articles about political bridge-building, and in books about emotional intelligence and leadership. The quote endures because it speaks to something we desperately need to hear—that initial dislike or disagreement is not an endpoint but an invitation to deeper understanding. Yet like many historical quotations, its power depends partly on whether we understand its true origins and what the man who may have said it actually meant by such words.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, into circumstances of profound poverty and limited opportunity. His parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, were subsistence farmers of modest means and education. Lincoln received less than a year of formal schooling—a stunning fact given that he would become one of the most articulate and intellectually rigorous presidents in American history. Instead, he educated himself voraciously, reading by candlelight whatever books he could obtain: the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Shakespeare, and Plutarch’s Lives.
He taught himself mathematics, surveying, and eventually law. This self-directed path instilled in him a lifelong habit of questioning, reading, and thinking deeply rather than accepting received wisdom. When his family moved to Indiana and then to Illinois, Lincoln worked as a store clerk, rail-splitter, and surveyor before entering the law. He taught himself enough jurisprudence to gain admission to the bar in 1836 and eventually moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he practiced law and entered the state legislature.
The Origin of Lincoln’s Famous Quote
Lincoln’s political career accelerated in the 1850s as the slavery question tore the nation apart. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 reignited the slavery debate with unprecedented fury. Lincoln, previously a Whig with moderate views, joined the nascent Republican Party. His seven debates with Stephen Douglas across Illinois in 1858 made him a national figure. Though he lost that Senate race, his clear articulation of free-labor ideology and his moral opposition to slavery’s expansion brought him the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. His election prompted eleven Southern states to secede.
The nation plunged into civil war in April 1861. Lincoln’s presidency became a grinding struggle to preserve the Union while navigating military strategy, cabinet management, and the deepening moral crisis of slavery itself. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In 1865, weeks before his assassination, Congress passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. He delivered the Gettysburg Address, those 272 words that redefined American democracy itself. John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, and he died the next morning at fifty-six.
The quote about not liking a man and needing to know him better appears in various forms in Lincoln biographies and collections, often without a precise source. Some versions attribute it to a conversation with a cabinet member or a White House visitor. Others place it in Lincoln’s law practice days in Springfield. The attribution is genuinely uncertain. No contemporary diary entry or newspaper account definitively records the exact words or moment. This uncertainty matters because it means we partly construct Lincoln’s wisdom retroactively, reading into the quote what we need it to mean.
However, the sentiment aligns so perfectly with Lincoln’s documented approach to people and problems that the quote feels true even if its provenance is murky. Multiple Lincoln biographers, including William H. Herndon (who knew Lincoln personally) and David Donald, have referenced versions of this idea as part of Lincoln’s character. The quote likely captures something he said or believed, even if we cannot pinpoint the specific occasion. The principle of “i don’t like that man i must get to know him better” seems genuinely characteristic of how he operated.
What makes this quote philosophically coherent with Lincoln’s larger worldview is his documented habit of seeking out people he disagreed with rather than avoiding them. He appointed William Seward as Secretary of State and Salmon Chase as Secretary of the Treasury for his cabinet—both men had opposed him for the presidency and harbored ambitions to replace him. Rather than surround himself with sycophants, Lincoln deliberately chose brilliant, strong-willed men who challenged him. His law partner Herndon recalled that Lincoln was endlessly curious about human nature. He would sit in his office observing people, thinking about what moved them and why. Lincoln’s speeches and letters reveal a man who believed understanding required imagination and empathy.
He sought to imagine himself in another’s position. The Gettysburg Address does not mock or demonize the enemy. Instead, it appeals to a shared past and a shared future. Even his Second Inaugural Address, delivered weeks before his death, is notable for its refusal to declare moral superiority over the South. He invoked divine judgment on both North and South for the sin of slavery.
I Don’t Like That Man I Must Get to Know Him Better
Lincoln’s temperament was melancholic and searching rather than self-assured and dogmatic. He suffered from chronic depression throughout his life. By most accounts, he was an unhappy man even in his greatest moments of triumph. This fundamental sadness may have made him less inclined toward the certainties that comfort most people. He could not settle into simple judgments because his nature was to probe, question, and imagine complexity. A man who has not had easy answers handed to him—who has had to educate himself and think his way into every conclusion—may be less prone to dismissing others out of hand. The principle that “i don’t like that man i must get to know him better” reflects this fundamental intellectual and emotional orientation. It suggests that dislike is not a permanent condition but a prompt for inquiry. It presumes that knowing someone better is possible and worthwhile, that initial impression is provisional.
In the years and decades following Lincoln’s assassination, the Lincoln legend grew steadily. His words—real and apocryphal—became resources for various causes and movements. During the Civil Rights era, different sides claimed and contested Lincoln: those who saw him as an emancipator and those who emphasized his gradualism. Contemporary leaders have adopted the quote about getting to know someone you dislike as a model for curiosity and bridge-building. Business literature frequently features it in books about emotional intelligence and leadership. Social media shares it as a counterpoint to the contemporary speed of judgment, often posted by people advocating for slower, more deliberate thinking about others. Corporate diversity programs have invoked it as a rationale for cross-cultural dialogue. It has become a secular wisdom quotation rather than a historically specific utterance—something people turn to when they want to believe that understanding is possible.
How Understanding Changes Our First Impressions
For everyday life, “i don’t like that man i must get to know him better” offers practical and spiritual guidance. In an age when we can block, mute, and delete people instantly, when algorithms show us versions of the world confirming our existing preferences, Lincoln’s imagined words suggest a counterforce. Dislike can be a beginning rather than an ending. In personal relationships, we encounter people who irritate us for reasons we may not fully understand. A family member with different politics, a coworker whose manner grates, a neighbor whose choices confuse us—these situations prompt us to withdraw or judge.
But Lincoln’s observation suggests that judgment and withdrawal are failures of imagination. To truly know someone better is to understand their history, their wounds, and their reasoning. It does not necessarily mean liking them, but it means moving from dismissal to understanding. In the workplace, this wisdom applies to difficult colleagues, unreasonable clients, and competitors whose success seems undeserved. Getting to know them better might reveal that their behavior has logic, that their success has history, and that their perspective, though foreign, is coherent from their vantage point.
The quote also carries moral weight in larger contexts. It suggests an approach to groups of people, to ideological opponents, and to cultures and communities different from our own. The instinct to dislike often reflects an instinct toward tribal belonging. Our own group tells us to dislike the other group, the other party, the other religion. But honoring Lincoln’s principle would mean taking seriously the lives and reasoning of those we dislike.
We would seek to understand them better even as we maintain our disagreements. This is not naïveté or the erasure of real conflicts. Lincoln himself never abandoned his opposition to slavery despite whatever understanding he may have sought of those who defended it. But he maintained, especially as the war progressed, that the enemy could be redeemed and that the nation could be one again. The phrase “i don’t like that man i must get to know him better” embodies a tragic realism: people are complex, initial judgments are unreliable, and the work of understanding is both necessary and difficult.
Why do these words continue to matter, in whatever form they were originally spoken? Human beings are naturally tribal, judgmental, and prone to certainty. The modern world offers infinite tools for reinforcing that certainty while avoiding genuine encounter with difference. Dislike is easy and understanding is hard. Lincoln, a man who rose from almost nothing through relentless self-education and who steered a nation through its greatest crisis by refusing to demonize those he opposed, exemplifies a different way.
The quote—authentic or not in its specifics—captures something true about his character and something urgently needed in ours. In a world increasingly divided by algorithm and ideology, the suggestion that we might approach someone we dislike with curiosity rather than contempt offers possibility. We might see initial impression as an invitation to deeper knowing. This principle of “i don’t like that man i must get to know him better” offers a path toward transformation both personal and political. That is why Lincoln’s words, real or reconstructed, continue to move us.