Daniel Chester French (April 20, 1850 – October 7, 1931) was one of the great American sculptors. In 1893, French was a founding member of the National Sculpture Society, he also became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1917, he designed the Pulitzer Prize gold medal presented to laureates. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln (1920) at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Lincoln has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest of all U.S. Presidents.

The quote ‘I will prepare and someday my chance will come’ is a variation of the quote that is attributed to Lincoln on the Merrill Gage (1892-1981) statute located at Lincoln College called “Lincoln, the Student” which has Lincoln’s prophetic words on the base: “I shall prepare myself and someday my chance will come.” The quote itself is possibly a variation on another attributed quote found in the 1931 book Steps Upward in Personality by Laura Haddock which reads: “I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.”

About Lincoln Memorial Statue

Abraham Lincoln (the statue) is a colossal seated figure of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln sculpted in marble. The 170-ton statue is composed of 28 blocks of white Georgia marble and rises 30 feet (9.1 m) from the floor.

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Work released under CC-BY-SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0