Often an idea would occur to me which seemed to have force. … I never let one of those ideas escape me, but wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it in that drawer. In that way I saved my best thoughts on the subject, and, you know, such things often come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out. To save the results of such mental action is true intellectual economy.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)

Remarks to James F. Wilson (Jun 1862)

In G. Iles, ed., Autobiography, Greatest Americans (1924)