Quotes from Jon Meacham

He called for unity against the forces of fear. "Now, the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us….If they divide us, they can make some hay. And all these years they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities, and dividing us.

Dan, what people want is results. That's what matters.' " Bush's discomfort with the rhetorical requirements of his office was one of his cardinal weaknesses as a president.

Unless he convinced himself that no great life was without its mishaps and its mistakes, he would not be able to return to the arena.

The story of the Louisiana Purchase is one of strength, of Jefferson's adaptability and, most important, his determination to secure the territory from France, doubling the size of the country and transforming the United States into a continental power. A slower or less courageous politician might have bungled the acquisition; an overly idealistic one might have lost it by insisting on strict constitutional scruples. Jefferson, however, was neither

First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity.

Believe me, there is nothing wrong with this country that repeated strong dosages of the facts will not correct," Hoyt told other editors at a Tucson, Arizona, meeting in November 1954. "Even McCarthyism will melt away before this treatment.

The perpetual threat of conflict—first with one European power, then with another—infused American politics with a sense of constant crisis. Both Federalists and Republicans believed the fate of the United States could turn on the confrontation of the hour. In the broad public discourse, driven by partisan editors publishing partisan newspapers, there seemed no middle ground, only extremes of opinion or of outcome.

The perfect should not be the enemy of the good...compromise is the oxygen of democracy.

Yet for all that the United States has accomplished—and we have been a country that people take pains to come to, not to leave—we remain an imperfect union.

Reagan was known as something Bush would never be: the Great Communicator. Instead of learning from the president he served for eight years, Bush appears to have become intimidated by the Reagan rhetorical legacy. He therefore preferred the press conference format, where he could jump around from topic to topic in a way that matched his personal hyperdrive.

Robert Shelton of The New York Times had reviewed a Greenwich Village performance by a young folk singer, Bob Dylan. "His clothes may need a bit of tailoring," Shelton wrote of Dylan, "but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano, and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt that he is bursting at the seams with talent.

everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will," Jefferson said.72 "This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own sustenance.

while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage.

Son," Johnson said, "I've served in the House. And I've been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they're both good places to serve. So I wouldn't begin to advise you what to do, except to say this—that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." The former president paused. "Do I make my point?

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.

One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

points ahead, working for a common good. Fear pushes away; hope pulls others closer. Fear divides; hope unifies.

It is a useful way of thinking about why the Klan opposed immigration (which brought a bunch of new kids to the block who might mow the lawn for less money) and was anxious about technological change in general (the move from agrarian life to industrialized economy and then the attendant march of automation in factories meant jobs would become ever more difficult to come by).

He dreamed big but understood that dreams become reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily enough to bend history to their purposes. 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.

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?" The

In his literary commonplace book, Jefferson transcribed these lines from a version of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice: The Man who has not Music in his Soul, Or is not touch'd with Concord of sweet Sounds, Is fit for Treasons, Stratagems, & Spoils, The Motions of his Mind are dull as Night, And his Affections dark as Erebus: Let no such Man be trusted.

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union," she said in 1873 after she illegally cast a ballot for U. S. Grant for president. "And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men.

To know what has come before is to be armed against despair.

Words attributed long afterward to Sojourner Truth, who spoke to a Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, put the struggles of the day well: "I 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.