ADVICE FROM US PRESIDENTS

 

Perhaps you can find guidance and/or inspiration from these words from US presidents, many of whom were trained as lawyers.

 

GERALD R. FORD~ 38th President of The United States

 

"Phil Buchen and I could have used this fine advice when we opened Ford & Buchen in 1941." (About a previous edition of "How to Start & Build a Law Practice")

 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 

Career advice from President Abraham Lincoln on being a successful lawyer

 

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."

                 

"Get the books, and read and study them untill you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing."

 

ON LEAVING A FIRM

 

"As to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?"

 

THOMAS JEFFERSON

 

“Books constitute capital. A library book is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.” (emphasis added)

 

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving  his goal, nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

 

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

 

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

 

JOHN F. KENNEDY

 

“ Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

 

“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of inaction.”

 

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

 

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

 

THOMAS JEFFERSON

 

“If you want something that you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”

 

BARACK OBAMA

 

“Change won’t happen if we wait for help or for the right moment...We are the change we need.”

 

HARRY S. TRUMAN

 

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”

 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

 

“Believe you can and you’re half way there.”

 

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

 

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”.