Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin

Don't hit till you have to, but, when you do hit, hit hard.

Two giant strides toward Lincoln's ascension to the presidency were, ironically, his two failed efforts, in 1855 and 1858, to become the U.S. senator from Illinois.

If I am ever to be remembered," Johnson wistfully told me, "it will be for civil rights.

The same magazines which not long before advertised products which would quickly allow women to return to their war work now extolled elaborate recipes which women could attempt if they stayed home and vacated jobs for men.

His one passion was for the game of golf, which Roosevelt found excruciatingly dull and slow.

faith never foundered that if the people "were taken into the confidence of their government and received a full and truthful statement of what was happening, they would generally choose the right course.

The habit of mobility had become ingrained.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

They would carry their books to the woods and read aloud to one another. At picnic lunches near Cooper's Bluff, they recited their favorite poems. "In the early days," Fanny recalled, "we all delighted in Longfellow and Mrs. Browning and Owen Meredith." Later, they turned to Swinburne, Kipling, Shelley, and Shakespeare. The Roosevelts

The bullet that rests in Roosevelt's chest has killed Wilson for the Presidency," one Democratic speaker suspected.

Roosevelt repeatedly "brought his clenched fist down on the palm of his other hand.

During the long sea voyage from Manila to San Francisco, doctors discovered that Taft's incision was not healing properly. It was "opened and drained," but months of bed rest the previous fall had weakened his knees and ankles, making it painful for him to stand for any protracted time. To compound matters, Nellie was suffering from what was later diagnosed as malaria.

But unlike the "electric" excitement that had filled the room four years earlier, when Nellie had sparkled with happiness and Taft had "laughed with the joy of a boy," both the president and first lady clearly understood that the divisive convention had rendered Republican chances for election in November almost impossible.

As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world.

There I go When my heart all worn by grief Sinketh low. Where my baseless hopes do lie There to find my peace, go I. Sad and slow . . 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present," he told Congress. "As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.

I find that without a place to work, it is difficult to work. I look forward with the greatest pleasure to the use of my books at night at home.

It was a grim and evil fate, but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working.

On July 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln convened a special session of his cabinet to reveal—not to debate—his preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Both Eleanor Roosevelt and Louis Howe recognized from the outset that Franklins spirit would be destroyed if his political ambitions were throttled. If he didn't have political hope; he would die spiritually, intellectually and in his personality.

His fierce determination to escape an invalid's fate led him to transform his body and timid demeanor through strenuous work; Taft, on the other hand, blessed from birth with robust health, would allow his physical strength and energy to gradually dissipate over the years into a state of obesity.

With McClure's support, Steffens embarked on an odyssey. For the better part of three years, he called on people in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, and Madison. "My business is to find subjects and writers, to educate myself in the way the world is wagging, so as to bring the magazine up to date," he explained to his father. "I feel ready to do something really fine.

Roosevelt and Root deputized Taft to inform the Holy See that the United States would purchase the lands for a fair price so long as the hated friars never returned to the archipelago. The land would then be redistributed among the poor Filipino farmers.

Acknowledge when failed policies demand a change in direction.