Quotes from Jon Meacham

While it took World War II to put a true end to the Great Depression, the work of the New Deal had already added a new and permanent dimension to the American experiment in the mid-twentieth century: the expectation that government could play a more direct role in individual lives.

When I have found men mere politicians, bending to the popular breeze and changing with it, for the self-popularity, I have ever shunned them, believing that they were unworthy of my confidence—but still treat them with hospitality and politeness.

Joe began to get publicity-crazy," Smith recalled in an interview with the historian David M. Oshinsky. "And the other senators were now afraid to speak their minds, to take issue with him. It got to the point where some of us refused to be seen with people he disapproved of. A wave of fear had struck Washington.

Our fate is contingent upon which element—that of hope or that of fear—emerges triumphant.

I always consider the settlement of America with Reverence and Wonder," John Adams wrote in 1765, "as the Opening of a grand scene and Design in Providence, for the Illumination of the Ignorant and the Emancipation of the slavish Part of Mankind all over the Earth.

If you ever sit here, you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time.

his other hand. Sensitive to his guest's affliction, Churchill realized that "every step" was

Garry Wills's classic 1978 book on the Declaration, Inventing America, put it well: "When Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness," Wills wrote, "he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant public happiness which is measurable; which is, indeed, the test and justification of any government.

William L. Shirer, who had covered Nazi Germany, wrote on returning home. "I had seen these poisons grow into ugly witch hunting and worse in the totalitarian lands abroad, but I was not prepared to find them taking root in our own splendid democracy.

Nothing makes a man come to grips more directly with his conscience than the Presidency….The burden of his responsibility literally opens up his soul. No longer can he accept matters as given; no longer can he write off hopes and needs as impossible. —LYNDON B. JOHNSON

In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds

In the 1790s, with the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Federalists sought not just to win elections but to eliminate their opponents altogether.

For only the President represents the national interest," JFK said. "Upon him alone converge all the needs and aspirations of all parts of the country…all nations of the world.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain: and he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which he is beset.

We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives." He

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.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user….I believe in suffrage for women in America, because I think they are fit for it. I believe for women, as for men, more in the duty of fitting one's self to do well and wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot.

You never can tell what's going to happen to a man until he gets to a place of responsibility

Jackson understood that he was expending precious political capital and untold hours battling for the Eatons' full acceptance into Washington society, but he was doing it less for Margaret than for her husband, for whom he held genuine regard and whose good sense appears to have extended to every aspect of public life except for his own marriage.   THE

In judging of others, let us always think the best, and employ the spirit of charity and candor. But in judging of ourselves, we ought to be exact and severe.

the habits of the governed determine in a great degree what is practicable.

These answers are fine as far as they go - but still children die, things go wrong, and hearts get broken, so the answers don't go very far. I certainly can't dispose of the challenges to Christian belief, nor can I make an entirely rational case for the existence of God. What I can do is join a vast chorus of voices who see religion as intrinsic and seek to make their home in the ethos of a faith that suggests an order and a direction amid the confusions of life.

Plenty of philosophical men live in abstract regions, debating types and shadows. The rarer sort is the reader and thinker who can see the world whole.

history is a living thing that never dies.