Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin

Kennedy's death had unexpectedly brought fulfillment of his greatest ambition in circumstances that must have inspired awesome guilt and doubts.

we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.

The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.

Gather firsthand information, ask questions.

To Lincoln's mind, the fundamental test of a democracy was its capacity to "elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all." A

Compromises based on the idea that the preservation of the Union is more important than the liberty of nearly 4,000,000 human beings cannot be right. The alteration of the Constitution to perpetuate slavery—the enforcement of a law to recapture a poor, suffering fugitive . . . these compromises cannot be approved by God or supported by good men.

He then took his listeners back to their common beginnings, to the founding of the nation, unraveling a narrative to demonstrate that when the Constitution was adopted, "the plain, unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity

Spring had come to Washington. The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Yet the glacial mood of the capital refused to melt. Accusations

The more you read about a subject, he advised me, the more interesting it will seem.

What fired in Lincoln this furious and fertile time of self-improvement? The answer lay in his readiness to gaze in the mirror and soberly scrutinize himself. Taking stock, he found himself wanting. From the beginning, young Lincoln aspired to nothing less than to inscribe his name into the book of communal memory.

When he first returned to the Badlands in the summer of 1884, the austere landscape seemed to mirror his melancholy.

Find time and space in which to think. As Lincoln began to survey the darkening landscape of the war and consider a new strategy regarding slavery, he needed time to reflect upon both the constitutionality and the ramifications of issuing an emancipation order.

Things are certainly kaleidoscopic," Roosevelt telegraphed.

Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty," Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in Wealth Against Commonwealth, an influential 1902 indictment of the trusts. "The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State . . . and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master, instead of servant.

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract," he noted, "to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form," they assume an obligation to the public.

showed by his appetite his appreciation of Molotov's magnificent refreshments. Relaxed and fortified, he returned to his car and proceeded to recite Byron's "Childe Harold" to Sarah for the remainder of the journey to Yalta.

The American people are strange in their attitudes toward their idols, he (Taft) mused. They lead them on and then cut their legs from under them, simply to make their fall all the greater.

Taft generally ate alone. Forever struggling to lose weight, he limited his midday meal to an apple or a glass of water.

The young man never seemed to know what idleness was," marveled Cutler, "and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands.

The worsening context of the war, which threatened the survival of the Union and the Constitution itself, provided a suitable resolution to this dilemma.

Fearing that Taft would be too reticent on the stump, Roosevelt barraged him with incessant advice. "Do not answer Bryan; attack him!" he counseled in early September, adding, "Don't let him make the issues.

Generations of historians have agreed with Holmes, pointing to Roosevelt's self-assured, congenial, optimistic temperament as the keystone to his leadership success.

Theodore) Roosevelt considered his experience with 'fellow ranchmen on what was then the frontier' to be 'the most educational asset' of his entire life, instrumental to his success in becoming president.