Quotes from Jon Meacham

Whether one believes or not, religion is as real a force in the life of the world as economics or politics, and it demands fair-minded attention. Even if you think the entire religious enterprise is at best misguided and at worst counterproductive, it remains vital, inspiring great good and, sometimes, great evil.

Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.

With a writer's eye, Irving detected Jackson's depths. As his admirers say, he is truly an old Roman-to which I would add, with a little dash of the Greek; for I suspect he is as knowing as I believe he is honest.

this injunction of TR's remains resonant: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

Songs are the soul of movement! - MLK Jr.

We live in a center-right country. Now watch me smile oleaginously.

Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another.

A small thing, but in a dissonant world, every moment of harmony counts--and if we share music, we might just shout in anger a little less and sing in unity more. Or so we can hope.

I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. —Words popularly attributed to SOJOURNER TRUTH, the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible," the theologian and thinker Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1944, "but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. —JAMES BALDWIN

For Jefferson, politics was not a dispiriting distraction but an undertaking that made everything else possible.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, 'Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned?' The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. 'Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.2 —PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, at a dinner in honor of all living recipients of the Nobel Prize, 1962

It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.

The American people," Small added, "must understand that as soon as America doesn't stand for something in the world, there is going to be a tremendous erosion of freedom.

A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.

Democracy is easy; republicanism is hard. Democracy is fueled by passion; republicanism is founded on moderation. Democracy is loud, raucous, disorderly; republicanism is quiet, cool, judicious – and that we still live in its light is the Founders' most wondrous deed.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it in a phrase drawn from the abolitionist Theodore Parker, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Bends, not swerves—but what we can miss in this cold-eyed understanding of history is that the arc won't even bend without devoted Americans pressing for the swerve.

If the men and women of the past, with all their flaws and limitations and ambitions and appetites, could press on through ignorance and superstition, racism and sexism, selfishness and greed, to create a freer, stronger nation, then perhaps we, too, can right wrongs and take another step toward that most enchanting and elusive of destinations: a more perfect Union.

Not all great presidents were always good, and neither individuals nor nations are without evil.