Quotes from Jon Meacham

September 1966. "I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

from St. Luke: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.

For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.)

The moment illuminates the political Jefferson—a man who got his way quietly but unmistakably, without bluster or bombast, his words congenial but his will unwavering.

All men," Homer wrote, "have need of the gods," and the secular wish to banish religion from the public square is perennial but doomed—one might as well try to eliminate economics, geography, or partisanship as forces that shape our politics. The more productive task is to manage and marshal the effects of religious feeling on the broader republic.

The forty-first president asked that his name be permanently removed from the rolls of the NRA. Clinton and Bush: There, from two men of different generations, different philosophies, different temperaments, came unambiguous words of denunciation in a time of

philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

Then his Father's will was done, and from darkness came light, and death was conquered. This is our story, our faith, our consolation.

in the fears and follies of man, but on his reason.…

America has always been torn between the ideal and the real, between noble goals and inevitable compromises. So was Jefferson. In his head and in his heart, as in the nation itself, the perfect warred with the good, the intellectual with the visceral.

George Washington and Patrick Henry had resorted to arms to win their liberty—so, Malcolm X argued, why shouldn't African Americans be able to draw on that example in the face of fear, intimidation, and brutality?

As Goldwater would put it, capturing the conservative credo, "…extremism in defense of liberty—is—no—vice." (He added: "…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!")

Rendering moral judgements in retrospect can be hazardous. It is unfair to judge the past by the standards of the present. Yet we can assess a man's views on a moral issue - which slavery unquestionably was - by what others in the same age and facing the same realities thought and did.

A constitution has been acquired which, though neither of us think perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow-citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone.

Where Goldwaterites saw the world in black and white, Rockefeller noted shades of gray.

he wanted to win. Republicans in the Texas of 1963–64 were Goldwater men, not Rockefeller men. So George Bush was a Goldwater man.

tag from Virgil: "Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis." The line means "Carry on, and preserve yourselves for better times."59

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."29

to Congress for

When he read coverage he disliked, McCarthy did not keep quiet—he went on the offensive, singling out specific publications and particular journalists, sometimes at rallies.

This isn't fair, Dad," Jeb said. "This isn't fair to you." His father cut him off. "What are you talking about, fair?" Bush said. This was politics; this was real life. "Nobody owes us a damn thing. We're going to leave this city with our heads high and I don't want to hear that anymore." Bushes didn't whine. "Do your best and don't look back"—that was the code.

Lincoln said that he believed "the legitimate object of government is 'to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.'

position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.