Quotes from Jon Meacham

Franklin D. Roosevelt observed during the 1932 campaign, "The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.

They all live in cities, together, and can act in a body readily and at all times; they give chief employment to the newspapers, and therefore have most of them under their command. The agricultural interest is dispersed over a great extent of country, have little means of intercommunication with each other, and feeling their own strength and will, are conscious that a single exertion of these will at any time crush the machinations against their government. Jefferson

George Washington was the first and greatest such example, a man called to power not only because of his views but also for his reassuring bearing. He was a man with whom the people felt comfortable. Jackson's political appeal came out of the same tradition—a tradition in which a leader creates a covenant of mutual confidence between himself and the broader public.

From 8 to 10 o'clock, practice music.16 From 10 to 1, dance one day and draw another. From 1 to 2, draw on the day you dance, and write a letter the next day. From 3 to 4, read French. From 4 to 5, exercise yourself in music. From 5 till bed-time, read English, write, etc.

The Nation and Government," TR wrote, "within the range of fair play and a just administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits and autocratic control of big business.

People respect candor if they are confident their leaders have a plan for moving forward.

Writing in 1783, George Washington had articulated what we like to think of as the American way on such things: "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.

In his postpresidential notes, Harry Truman was candid about the tricky nature of democracy. Yes, much of the nation's fate lies in the hands of the president, but the voters have the ultimate authority. "The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get," Truman wrote. "And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn't take care of the job, they've got nobody to blame but themselves.

Man Ã¢â'¬Â¦ feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.

1802, Alexander Hamilton—himself an immigrant and, in the twenty-first century, an emblem of American mobility—had reservations: "The influx of foreigners must…tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities.

Bush 41 was the only Republican around who knew that anything that consistently defies arithmetic can't work for very long.

system, which opens the way for all." Too often, people view their own opportunity as dependent on domination over others, which helps explain why such people see the expansion of opportunity for all as a loss of opportunity for themselves. In such moments the forces of reaction thrive.

He believed in constant conversation between the president and lawmakers, for Jefferson thought that "if the members are to know nothing but what is important enough to be put into a public message Ã¢â'¬Â¦ it becomes a government of chance and not of design."24

After his own presidency, Adams observed, "The people…ought to consider the President's office as the indispensable guardian of their rights," adding: "The people cannot be too careful in the choice of their Presidents.

Extremism, racism, nativism, and isolationism, driven by fear of the unknown, tend to spike in periods of economic and social stress—a period like our own.

So much of music builds on prior ideas and themes

We have long proved ourselves quite capable of living with this contradiction, using Hamiltonian means (centralized decision-making) while speaking in Jeffersonian rhetorical terms (that government is best which governs least).

Surely, in the light of history," Mrs. Roosevelt remarked, "it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.

If you treat people as monuments you limit the capacity to teach. (on Armchair Expert podcast)

in which we can live, live freely, and pursue happiness to the best of our abilities. We cannot guarantee equal outcomes, but we must do all we can to ensure equal opportunity.

Nostalgia is a powerful force, and in the maelstrom of the moment many of us seek comfort in imagining that once there was a Camelot—without quite remembering that the Arthurian legend itself was about a court riven by ambition and infidelity. One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

Writing in 1903, the scholar, historian, and activist W.E.B. Du Bois observed that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line," and, while Du Bois was surely right, it is correct, too, to say that color in some ways remains the problem of American history as a whole.

Thomas E. Dewey—once said: "You can't divide the country up into sections and have one rule for one section and one rule for another, and you can't encourage people's prejudices. You have to appeal to people's best instincts, not their worst ones. You may win an election or so by doing the other, but it does a lot of harm to the country.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal said, "President Roosevelt has committed a blunder that is worse than a crime, and no atonement or future act of his can remove the self-imprinted stigma." Alabama's Geneva Reaper was especially harsh. "Poor Roosevelt!" the paper wrote. "He might now just as well sleep with Booker Washington, for the scent of that coon will follow him to the grave as far as the South is concerned.