“If you want to test a man’s character,” Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, “give him power.”
It’s a pithy (not to mention timely) quotation, and for nearly a century, people have been repeating it under the assumption that Honest Abe actually said it, or at least something close to it.
But the provenance of the quote was a bit more complicated than that, Snopes.com’s Dan MacGuill reports. In fact, it originated as something that was said about Lincoln, not by him.
(The Daily Debunker brings top stories of the day from Snopes.com to your inbox. Subscribe!)
