Knee jerk reactions are by definition the result of emotion-based, undisciplined decision making.
Lincoln, as a young man while taking a break from farm work was often seen studying Euclidean geometry of all things. It paid off later in life. For example, he liked to ask, “how many legs does a dog have if you count the tail a leg? Four. Counting the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
His powers of logic-based persuasion were so compelling that it was said that as a trial lawyer he would begin the process of winning his case at the very outset when he was merely summarizing what took place.
This was not a man given to knee-jerk, emotion-packed reactions; contrary to what we might expect, Lincoln once said [and always lived by] the following: ‘Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.’ [One wonders if any of our current crop of political luminaries – or CEO’s - would agree with that emphasis on the primacy of reason over passion…]
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