Sam Hinkie went out the only way he ever could: in a blaze of procedure-laden, confusing, fan-crushing, very sad fire. That he issued a 13-page resignation letter that quoted, among others, Max Planck, Bill Belichick, Warren Buffett, Bill James and Abraham Lincoln was, somehow, not exactly surprising.
Sam Hinkie used fake Abraham Lincoln quotes in his resignation letter
Except he didn’t really quote Abraham Lincoln.
Hinkie leans on Honest Abe twice in his letter. In the first mention, Hinkie uses Lincoln as a way of explaining his Process™: you should spend however long it takes preparing to do the job right. From Hinkie’s letter:
A league with 30 intense competitors requires a culture of finding new, better ways to solve repeating problems. In the short term, investing in that sort of innovation often doesn’t look like much progress, if any. Abraham Lincoln said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Except Abraham Lincoln never spoke those words. Quote Investigator, which examines the provenance of fishy historical quotes, did its best to track down the supposed axe wisdom in 2014, and found that it may have originated in an 1856 sermon that had exactly nothing to do with Lincoln, who was first attributed with the quote in an ad for drills in 1960.
The second time Hinkie quotes our 16th president is better -- but still not right. Hinkie writes (emphasis mine):
Philadelphia has been wonderful to our family. Two of our children were born here. Lincoln said that to meet with the public “renewed in me my perceptions of responsibility and duty.” Those words rang hollow until we moved here and I talked with our fans. Everywhere I went, lifelong Sixers fans told me stories about how they wanted the team to be good again—really good.
Here’s what Lincoln actually said (emphasis again mine):
I tell you, Major, that I call these receptions my public opinion baths; for I have but little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way, and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty.
So that makes 0–2 on Lincoln quotes. Better luck next time in, uh, all things.
