Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin

She was never satisfied with anything less than perfection, but she was no grind. She was too interested in people.

As S. S. McClure well understood, the "vitality of democracy" depends on "popular knowledge of complex questions." At

The only question now," he said, "is which corpse gets the most flowers.

Survey after survey reflected a widespread conviction that extremism was the cause of Kennedy's death. It was to this sentiment that Johnson spoke in his peroration: "Let us put an end to the teaching and the preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation's bloodstream.

They were stealin' votes in east Texas," Johnson supporter and Austin mayor Tom Miller recalled, "we were stealin' votes in south Texas, only Jesus Christ could say who actually won it." But Jesus wasn't counting, and, by an eighty-seven-vote margin, "Landslide Lyndon" attained the Senate seat he had coveted for so long.

Moreover, he objected, "I have never done an official act with a view to promote my own personal aggrandizement, and I don't like to begin now.

For political leaders in a democracy are not revolutionaries or leaders of creative thought. The best of them are those who respond wisely to changes and movements already under way. The worst, the least successful, are those who respond badly or not at all, and those who misunderstand the direction of already visible change.

There it was again: the entrance up the darkened ramp disclosing an expanse of amazing green, the fervent crowd contained in a stadium scaled to human dimensions, the players so close it almost seemed that you could touch them, the eccentric features of an old ballpark constructed to fit the contours of the allotted space. I

There is no one left; none but all of us.

What is the difference between power, title, and leadership? Is leadership possible without a purpose larger than personal ambition?

Hearst's papers and magazines" were his intended target and promised his speech would clarify that he abhorred "the whitewash brush quite as much as of mud slinging.

Valliant. "Humor can be marvelously therapeutic

Chance had placed him in the catapult and now it was up to the vagaries of history to cut the catapult's rope.

She feared that she would become a slave to superficial, symbolic duties.

When you have worked with them, when you have lived with them, you do not have to wonder how they feel, because you feel it yourself.

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

Though Lincoln did not drink, smoke tobacco, use profane language, or engage in games of chance, he never condescended to those who did. On the contrary, when he had addressed the Springfield Temperance Society at the height of the temperance crusade, he had insisted that "such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.

private citizens were asked to open their homes;

Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.

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.

From his early twenties, Lyndon Johnson had operated upon the premise that if "he could get up earlier and meet more people and stay up later than anybody else," victory would be his.

think imagination is one of the greatest blessings of life," Edith later wrote, "and while one can lose oneself in a book one can never be thoroughly unhappy.

There was little to lead one to suppose that Abraham Lincoln, nervously rambling the streets of Springfield that May morning, who scarcely had a national reputation, certainly nothing to equal any of the other three, who had served but a single term in Congress, twice lost bids for the Senate, and had no administrative experience whatsoever, would become the greatest historical figure of the nineteenth century.

Moreover, Lincoln, unlike the brooding Chase, possessed a life-affirming humor and a profound resilience that lightened his despair and fortified his will.