Quotes from H.W. Brands

America's mission is to join the most ancient civilizations with the most modern. John Augustus Roeblin

As in all branches of the retail trade, the key to success was skill at sales.

you do not get what is the foundation of the very liberty that we breathe, that the people are entitled to have the facts, that the judgment of the government itself is subject to their opinion and to their control, and in order to exercise that, they are entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Senator.

In Clay's time the federal government issued only metal money: gold and silver coins, called specie. Paper currency was the responsibility of banks, which promised to redeem their notes in specie.

When an acquaintance commiserated upon hearing of the loss of America's capital, Franklin replied, "You mistake the matter. Instead of Howe taking Philadelphia, Philadelphia has taken Howe.

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have often been asked how I felt when I first found myself on free soil," he wrote later. The answer was simple yet profound. "A new world had opened upon me," he said. "I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct.

CONSERVATIVES IN MODERN America face a chronic problem in running for office. Often believing government to be the enemy, they have to explain to themselves and others why they want to join that enemy.

People say, 'If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.' I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are, just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish.

coltish-looking

Clemens's loss was literature's gain. Forced to earn his daily bread once more, he turned to mining in the Mother Lode country. He found little gold, but gathered impressions and experiences. He met Bret Harte, and guessed that if Harte could make money from stories about the gold country, so could he. He proved himself right with a tale about a jumping-frog contest in Calaveras County, which won him a wide and enthusiastic national readership.

Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

Gen. Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.

then—and a shirt that had not seen a wash-

Louisiana is a delightful country, and though the climate too often proves fatal to a foreigner, yet generally we ascribe to the climate what is the effect of our imprudence. I have been severely attacked this summer, and had nearly died, but at length I am acclimated." The author of these words was John Windship, a Bostonian who migrated to Louisiana not long after his graduation from Harvard in 1809.

His strong, gentle, confident voice resonated across the nation with an eloquence that brought comfort and resilience to a nation caught up in a storm and reassured us that we could lick any problem," Reagan recalled. "I will never forget him for that.

One of George H. W. Bush's early teachers at Andover wrote, At the moment he is intellectually immature for his powers of reasoning are not entirely developed.

By then Franklin was a world-renowned scientific and political figure, feted for taming lightning and tyrants; that such a mundane improvement as fire prevention gave him such pleasure reflected his solid grounding in the affairs of ordinary life.

He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.

The sight of big ships, of the many new uniforms, at once serious and cool, left Bush with an overall sense of the navy's power and camaraderie and purpose.

I can see that spark coming back when he talks about the future.

He lived in terror of, well, becoming ordinary.