Quotes from Jon Meacham

Theodore Roosevelt put it best: "The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord with the highest principles of honor and justice.

It was easy to speak theoretically and idealistically about politics when one is seeking power. The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing.

Lincoln offered a case study in the leadership of hope and progress; Andrew Johnson's is an unhappier story of willfulness and single-minded service to a favored constituency—in this case, to white Southerners.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.…1 Nothing is required for this enlightenment Ã¢â'¬Â¦ except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. —IMMANUEL KANT, "What Is Enlightenment?

If he did not suffer, if he did not bleed, if he did not feel every bit of the pain of execution as he gulped for air, then he would not be the Christ we know. He was fulfilling his epochal role in history on that cross; he was not playacting, not a god pretending to die. He was the Word made flesh, who was, however strangely and incomprehensibly, full of grace and truth.

For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other.

I knew that a President can appeal to the best in our people or the worst; he can call for action or live with inaction.

If Mrs. Roosevelt were writing today, she might put it this way: Don't let any single cable network or Twitter feed tell you what to think.

on Tuesdays and Fridays Dorothy walked to lessons with her piano teacher, Mrs. Hickenlooper.

We must make our peace with mystery or else we might go mad. For me, faith is complicated, challenging and sometimes confounding. It is not magical but mysterious. Magic means there is a spell, a formula, to work wonders. Mystery means there is no spell, no formula—only shadow and impenetrability and hope that, in a phrase T.S. Eliot borrowed from Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

In 1940, fearing a third Roosevelt term, the Third Reich had sought to influence the presidential election by placing newspaper ads and paying for isolationist congressmen to attend the Republican National Convention.

political life in a position such as this is one long strain on the temper, one long acceptance of the second best, one long experiment of checking one's impulses with an iron hand and learning to subordinate one's own desires to what some hundreds of associates can be forced or cajoled or led into desiring.

events in other countries." The

For the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself (And even that approximation may be giving faith too much of a headstart).

The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, [and] it pains me to an unspeakable degree." J

So long as the basic rights of men are denied in any substantial portion of the earth, men everywhere must live in fear of their own rights and their own security," Truman said.

The way to stand the "long strain on the temper" is to embrace compromise, seek balance, and strive to serve the national interest, which will be, in the fullness of time, in the personal historical interest of the individual president himself.

No country has yet reached the absolute in protecting human rights. In all countries, certainly including our own, there is much to be accomplished.

enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his

Like all Americans," he said, "I like big things; big prairies, big forests and mountains, big wheat fields, railroads, and herds of cattle, too, big factories, steamboats and everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefitted by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.

The capacity of music to reassure and to remind is one of its cardinal virtues.

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

America has always been torn between the ideal and the real, between noble goals and inevitable compromises.

I have always had a horror of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that does not result in action," Roosevelt recalled. "I believe in realizable ideals and in realizing them, in preaching what can be practiced and then in practicing it.