Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin

I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.

Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare's kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school.

In order to "win a man to your cause," Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, "the great high road to his reason.

Having hope," writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, "means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks." Hope is "more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right"; it is "believing you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition," he wrote. "I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take them.

Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists tell us, consists of the ability to adapt to the inevitable stresses and misfortunes of life. It does not mean freedom from anxiety and depression, but only the ability to cope with these afflictions in a healthy way.

Lincoln's ability to retain his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in actute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways.

As he had done so many times before, Lincoln withstood the storm of defeat by replacing anguish over an unchangeable past with hope in an uncharted future.

We do not have to become heroes overnight," Eleanor once wrote. "Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed," Abigail Adams wrote to her son John Quincy Adams in the midst of the American Revolution, suggesting that "the habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

from John Hay's diary) "The President never appeared to better advantage in the world," Hay proudly noted in his diary. "Though He knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of that committee, he never cringed to them for an instant. He stood where he thought he was right and crushed them with his candid logic.

Moreover, Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress. Indeed, when he is compared with his colleagues, it is clear that he possessed the most even-tempered disposition of them all.

And Lincoln, as would be evidenced throughout his presidency, was a master of timing.

Unlike depression, melancholy does not have a specific cause. It is an aspect of temperament, perhaps genetically based. One may emerge from the hypo, as Lincoln did, but melancholy is an indelible part of one's nature.

Simon Cameron: "I loved my brother, as only the poor and lonely can love those with whom they have toiled and struggled up the rugged hill of life's success—but he died bravely in the discharge of his duty.

Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him—the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.

More and more it seems to me that about the best thing in life is to have a piece of work worth doing and then to do it well.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.