Quotes from Jon Meacham

When the word moderation becomes a dirty word we have some soul searching to do.

Well, what the hell is the presidency for?" he asked, if not to do the big things lesser men might not?

When he was thirteen, he used an anti-Semitic epithet to describe a Jewish friend. Thinking of the moment more than seven decades later, Bush volunteered the story and cried, shaken by guilt over a remark made in the 1930s. He shook his head in wonder at his own insensitivity. "Never forgotten it. Never forgotten it." (The classmate remained a Bush friend and supporter for many years.)

Near the end of Donald Trump's first year in power, for instance, The New York Times reported that, before taking office, he had "told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.

A revealing, oft-cited detail: Mississippi earmarked 20 percent of its entire state budget in 1866 for wooden limbs.)

Thou seest, not only the stains and scars of past sins, but the mutilations, the deep cavities, the chronic disorders which they have left in my soul. Thou seest the innumerable living sins…living in their power and presence, their guilt, and their penalties, which clothe me….Yet Thou comest. Thou seest most perfectly….Yet Thou comest.

The better you did—the more contests you won—the greater the next goal, the greater the next mission.

be together when it's

And where will it all end? Shall we sometime see Republicans excluding Democrats and Democrats excluding Republicans from our law-making bodies, on the ground that the other party's principles are 'inimical to the best interests' of the United States?

Such was the Bush code: Strive for victory, but never seem self-involved

Experience teaches us that men who are equally wise and good may differ in political as well

Intellectually I know America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country," the novelist Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, October 6, 1925, Coolidge was broad-gauged. "Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years of the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of to-day is real and genuine," Coolidge said. "No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.

Coolidge told the veterans: "I recognize the full and complete necessity of 100 percent Americanism, but 100 percent Americanism may be made up of many various elements.

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

Jefferson referred to the Federalists as madmen: "Their leaders are a hospital of incurables, and as such entitled to be protected and taken care of as other insane persons are."84,85 Still, there was hope—for to Jefferson, where there was freedom, there was always hope. "The times have been awful," he said, "but they have proved a useful truth that the good citizen must never despair of the commonwealth." Priestley

Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian…black and yellow…how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God….What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labor and look forward!

The denial of the popular will, Jefferson said privately, "opens upon us an abyss at which every sincere patriot must shudder."15

image of the kind of nation that TR, before, during, and after his presidency, sought to sustain: one in which America was welcoming to certain groups if those groups put away their cultures of origin.

The record is clear that Bush was aware that the United States, in contravention of its own stated policy, was trading arms for hostages as part of an initiative to reach out to moderate elements in Iran. "I'm one of the few people that know fully the details, and there is a lot of flack and misinformation out there," Bush told his diary on Wednesday, November 5, 1986. "It is not a subject we can talk about.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.1 —THOMAS JEFFERSON, July 5, 1775

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.

Every hope and every fear of his fellow citizens, almost every aspect of their wealth and activity, falls within the scope of his concern—indeed, within the scope of his duty," Harry Truman said. "Only a man who has held the office can really appreciate that.

And I tell you this: you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault'—not 'leadership.'…I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion—and conciliation—and education—and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That's the only kind of leadership I know—or believe in—or will