Quotes from Jon Meacham

Driven by the convictions that the Union was sacred and that slavery was wrong, Lincoln was instrumental in saving one and in destroying the other, expanding freedom and preserving an experiment in popular government that nearly came to an end on his watch.

A confirmed free trader, Bush was committed to NAFTA

At Naval Air Station Grosse Ile in Michigan, he and Barbara took a room in town for fourteen dollars a week, but without kitchen privileges. "It is sort of a lonely existence for poor Bar," Bush wrote home to Greenwich, "but she doesn't complain at all, and I am just in heaven having her here.

Jefferson was among the greatest men who had ever lived, a Renaissance figure who was formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without being showy, winning without appearing cloying.

in hand with the progress of the human mind.… We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

The form of government which prevails," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.

Many Americans have never liked acknowledging that the public sector has always been integral to making the private sector successful.

Progress in America does not usually begin at the top and among the few, but from the bottom and among the many. It comes when the whispered hopes of those outside the mainstream rise in volume to reach the ears and hearts and minds of the powerful.

The work of combatting broadly held views like those of the Klansmen of the 1920s is almost never easy or quick. It requires years of persistent witness and of standing firm in protest when it would be more convenient to give in and move on.

Fairly or not, Bush thought Rumsfeld an unreflective hawk who, along with a post-9/11 Dick Cheney, had formed the core of an influential hard-right element within the administration.

The Jefferson style – cultivate his elders, make himself pleasant to his contemporaries, and used his pen and his intellect to shape the debate – arm him well for the national arena.

appealing to race and religious hatreds is so thoroughly un-American and so contemptible that we are surprised that any intelligent person would engage in such perfidy for even one performance," The Dalton Citizen, a newspaper in North Georgia, wrote in 1925.

It's not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

And perhaps most important, he gave the nation the idea of American progress—the animating spirit that the future could be better than the present or the past. The greatest American politicians since have prospered by projecting a Jeffersonian vision that the country's finest hours lay ahead.

But they always stayed in the arena, grappling with each other and with Stalin to find a way to win. Had they failed, or truly fallen out with each other, we could be living in a different world.

the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send the invitation.

he hated the financial speculation that would result from the Hamiltonian vision of commerce. "It is much to be wished that every discouragement should be thrown in the way of men who undertake to trade without capital," Jefferson said.91 "The consumers pay for it in the end, and the debts contracted, and bankruptcies occasioned by such commercial adventurers, bring burden and disgrace on our country." Yet

Grace is not merited. It's not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty or attend dilapidated schools or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we're doing to cause some of our children to hate.

His impulse," Winston Churchill had written of FDR in the mid-1930s, "is one which makes toward the fuller life of the masses of the people in every land.

It is a charming thing to be loved by everybody, he told his grandchildren, and the way to obtain it is, never to quarrel or be angry with anybody. He hated arguing face-to-face, preferring to smooth out the rough edges of conversation, leading some people to believe Jefferson agreed with them when, in fact, he was seeking to avoid conflict

conceived and held up to the angry

Let's try to get our folks reasoning together and reasoning with Congress and with the Cabinet! Reason with the leadership and with the President!…And you don't need to start off by saying he is terrible—because he doesn't think he's terrible. Start talking about how you believe that he wants to do what's right and how you believe this is right, and you'll be surprised how many who want to do what's right will try to help you.

The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get," Truman wrote.