Quotes from Jon Meacham

Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States, it argued that Adams did "not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government," and that "there are great intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him for the office

Fear, Aristotle observed, does not strike those who are "in the midst of great prosperity.

The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye, Jefferson said.

under all conditions. There is little

Those who are frightened of losing what they have are the most vulnerable, and it is difficult to be clear-headed when you believe that you are teetering on a precipice.

The cost of partisanship for partisanship's sake—of seeing politics as blood sport, where the kill is the only object of the exercise—was, Livingston said, too high for a free society to pay.

Without Good Friday, there is no Easter; without Easter, there is no deliverance from evil; without deliverance from evil, there is no victory of light over dark, of love over hate, of life over death.

And so while whites built and dreamed, people of color were subjugated and exploited by a rising nation that prided itself on the expansion of liberty. Those twin tragedies shaped us then and ever after.

I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself

How, then, in an hour of anxiety about the future of the country, at a time when a president of the United States appears determined to undermine the rule of law, a free press, and the sense of hope essential to American life, can those with deep concerns about the nation's future enlist on the side of the angels?

what I believe true dignity consists, that is to say, honesty, propriety of conduct, and honest independence.

There's something about the transporting capacity of music, something about it's odd but undeniable ability to create a collective experience by firing our individual imaginations, that's more likely to open our minds and our hearts to competing points of view.

Calhoun called "the peculiar domestic institution of the Southern states.

His experience of the past two decades in foreign policy had also taught him that time often resolved the issues of the hour.

One plays by the conventions of politics in order to be in power when the hour calls for unconventional decisions.

the key to all diplomacy—was knowing when they were serious about their threats and when they were posturing.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user….

Men will thank God on their knees, a hundred years from now, that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House, in a position to give leadership to the thought of the American people and direction to the activities of their government, in that dark hour when a powerful and ruthless barbarism threatened to overrun the civilization of the Western World.

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

Democratic National Convention in Chicago in July 1932, he addressed himself to the future. "Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much," Roosevelt said. "To fail to offer them a new chance is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience.

We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

He drank no hard liquor but loved wine, taking perhaps three glasses a day.42 He did not smoke. When he received gifts of Havana cigars from well-wishers, he passed them along to friends.43

He embraced compromise as a necessary element of public life, engaged his political foes in the passage of important legislation, and was willing to break with the base of his own party in order to do what he thought was right, whatever the price. Quaint, yes: But it happened, in America, only a quarter of a century ago.

History, then, mattered enormously, for it could repeat itself at any time in any generation.12 And if that history brought tyranny, it was to be fought at all costs.