Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. "An outstanding feature of successful adaptation," writes George Vaillant, "is that it leaves the way open for future growth." Of course, Abraham Lincoln's capacity for growth would prove enormous.

There was no need to remind Roosevelt who controlled the senate. "I persistently refused to lose my temper," he recalled. "I merely explained good-humoredly that I had made up my mind." Though he steadfastly refused

As governor general of the Philippines, Taft had welcomed every political group at Malacañan Palace, making it "a rule never to pay any attention to personal squabbles and differences.

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power?

it was not only the executive's right but his responsibility "to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.

If the problems created by the industrial age were left unattended, Roosevelt cautioned, America would eventually be "sundered by those dreadful lines of division" that set "the haves" and the "have-nots" against one another.

A true leader is a man who can get people to work together on the points on which they agree and who can persuade others that when they disagree there are peaceful methods to settle their differences.

all his life he had "endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice.

Each party profited by the offices when in power," Roosevelt explained, "and when in opposition each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it itself had done and intended again to do.

We have the right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not only suspicion, but almost a certainty that they have had collusion with men whose interests were in conflict with the interests of the public, they shall, at least, be required to bring positive facts with which to prove there has not been such collusion; and they ought themselves to have been the first to demand such an investigation. -Teddy Roosevelt

Until we address unequal history, we cannot overcome unequal opportunity." Until blacks "stand on level and equal ground," we cannot rest. It must be our goal "to assure that all Americans play by the same rules and all Americans play against the same odds.

During the drive he was so gay, that I said to him, laughingly, 'Dear Husband, you almost startle me by your great cheerfulness,' he replied, 'and well I may feel so, Mary, I consider this day, the war, has come to a close—and then added, 'We must both, be more cheerful in the future—between the war & the loss of our darling Willie—we have both, been very miserable.' 

Johnson insisted, "I don't want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven't done nearly enough. I'm kind of ashamed of myself that I had six years and couldn't do more than I did.

I don't know that I will ever make a political speech again." Would he care to qualify that statement? one reporter queried. "Yes," Roosevelt laughingly said. "I won't say never.

In the long sentences of the president's message, semicolons followed by "yet" or "but" separated clauses that balanced each side of an issue, reflecting Roosevelt's characteristic "on the one hand, on the other" style of crediting antagonistic views.

If "defeat is an orphan," the old saying goes, "victory has a thousand fathers

If the continuing problems created by the Industrial Age were not addressed, he warned, the country would eventually be "sundered by those dreadful lines of division" that set "the haves" and the "have-nots" against one another.

The vice presidency "ought to be abolished," he told his friend Leonard Wood. "The man who occupies it may at any moment be everything; but meanwhile he is practically nothing.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.

His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization—the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding up of voters—was as crucial as the broad ideology laid out in the platform. The same intimate involvement in campaign organization that he displayed in these early years would characterize all of Lincoln's future campaigns.

immediately allayed his fears, he gratefully recalled, by "the raillery

If Roosevelt were given another chance to lead the country, he intended to make the Republican Party once more the progressive party of Abraham Lincoln, to restore "the fellow feeling, mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate for a common object.

Establish a clear purpose; challenge the team to work out details; traverse conventional departmental boundaries; set large short-term and long-term targets; create tangible success to generate accelerated growth and momentum.