Top 100 Jon Meacham Quotes
#1. The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.
Jon Meacham
#2. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.
Jon Meacham
#3. Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.
Jon Meacham
#4. It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail.
Jon Meacham
#5. He dreamed big but understood that dreams become reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily enough to bend history to their purposes.
Jon Meacham
#6. The lesson of the Clinton years and of Obama's win of both the nomination and the general election in 2008 is that Democrats need to be as tough as JFK was.
Jon Meacham
#7. Well," Bush answered, "I'm worried that sometimes your idealism will get in the way of what I think is sound governance.
Jon Meacham
#8. An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure.
Jon Meacham
#9. Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.
Jon Meacham
#10. For devotees of doctrine tended to fall in love with their own righteousness, ignoring inconvenient facts.
Jon Meacham
#11. I do not believe 'Newsweek' is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we're one of them, and I don't think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.
Jon Meacham
#12. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, [and] it pains me to an unspeakable degree." J
Jon Meacham
#13. The service
a moved Roosevelt called it the "keynote" of his meeting with Churchill
was working a kind of magic, which is one of the points of liturgy and theater: to use the dramatic to convince people of a reality they cannot see.
Jon Meacham
#14. Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class.
Jon Meacham
#15. The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.
Jon Meacham
#16. A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.
Jon Meacham
#17. History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?
Jon Meacham
#18. At Monticello he planned to return to farming and gardening with passionate zeal.
Jon Meacham
#19. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another.
Jon Meacham
#20. At Naval Air Station Grosse Ile in Michigan, he and Barbara took a room in town for fourteen dollars a week, but without kitchen privileges. "It is sort of a lonely existence for poor Bar," Bush wrote home to Greenwich, "but she doesn't complain at all, and I am just in heaven having her here.
Jon Meacham
#21. Good humor, Jefferson added, "is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration;
Jon Meacham
#22. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.
Jon Meacham
#23. If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
Jon Meacham
#24. Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations; Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.
Jon Meacham
#25. As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.1 - THOMAS JEFFERSON, July 5, 1775
Jon Meacham
#26. All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two
Jon Meacham
#27. Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.
Jon Meacham
#28. I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head,
Jon Meacham
#29. Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.
Jon Meacham
#30. From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.
Jon Meacham
#31. Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful, a tooth, as indolence,
Jon Meacham
#32. knows how this will end: but assuredly in one extreme or the other. There can be no medium between those who have loved so much.
Jon Meacham
#34. Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief - a critical test for many Americans.
Jon Meacham
#35. The search for the point of temperate power between competing elements of life - the national government and the states, the states and the people - was far from over.
Jon Meacham
#36. In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all.
Jon Meacham
#37. Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.
Jon Meacham
#38. We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse.
Jon Meacham
#39. I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive,
Jon Meacham
#40. Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.
Jon Meacham
#41. The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war, but in a wary, if often underplayed, alliance. History is unmistakable on this point.
Jon Meacham
#42. An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.
Jon Meacham
#43. The American people," Small added, "must understand that as soon as America doesn't stand for something in the world, there is going to be a tremendous erosion of freedom.
Jon Meacham
#44. Jefferson had his own privy just steps away from his bed alcove, one of three in the house proper.12 He used pieces of scrap paper for hygiene purposes.13 (Examples were collected from his privy by a family member on the day of Jefferson's death and now survive in the Library of Congress.)14 He
Jon Meacham
#45. As a rule, politicians tend to remember the things they wish to emulate or the things they hope to avoid.
Jon Meacham
#46. A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.
Jon Meacham
#47. Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts.
Jon Meacham
#48. We live in a center-right country. Now watch me smile oleaginously.
Jon Meacham
#49. To be tall and forbidding might command respect for a time, but not affection. To be overly familiar might command affection for a time, but not respect.
Jon Meacham
#50. With a writer's eye, Irving detected Jackson's depths. As his admirers say, he is truly an old Roman-to which I would add, with a little dash of the Greek; for I suspect he is as knowing as I believe he is honest.
Jon Meacham
#51. It was easy to speak theoretically and idealistically about politics when one is seeking power. The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing.
Jon Meacham
#52. Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.
Jon Meacham
#53. You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time
Jon Meacham
#54. Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
Jon Meacham
#55. The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way.
Jon Meacham
#56. He drank no hard liquor but loved wine, taking perhaps three glasses a day.42 He did not smoke. When he received gifts of Havana cigars from well-wishers, he passed them along to friends.43
Jon Meacham
#57. The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.
Jon Meacham
#58. The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.
Jon Meacham
#59. I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician.
Jon Meacham
#60. With the perspective afforded by the passage of time, where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families, innocents going about their lives, suddenly and brutally murdered, no other day can ever matter as much.
Jon Meacham
#61. The denial of the popular will, Jefferson said privately, "opens upon us an abyss at which every sincere patriot must shudder."15
Jon Meacham
#62. It is an unrepresentative city ... .They are so darn sure they are right on everything. The conventional wisdom in Manhattan, Bush believed, often failed to take opposing views into account except to dismiss such opinions as uninformed, prejudiced, and just plain wrong.
Jon Meacham
#63. My mind has been long fixed to bow to the judgment of the world, who will judge me by my acts, and will never take counsel from me as to what that judgment should be.
Jon Meacham
#64. It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.
Jon Meacham
#65. His experience of the past two decades in foreign policy had also taught him that time often resolved the issues of the hour.
Jon Meacham
#66. Jefferson was among the greatest men who had ever lived, a Renaissance figure who was formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without being showy, winning without appearing cloying.
Jon Meacham
#67. Politics is brutal because it engages the most fundamental human impulses for affection, honor, power, and fame. Great principles and grand visions are ennobling, but at its best politics is an imperfect means to an altruistic end.
Jon Meacham
#68. I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day.
Jon Meacham
#69. Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
#70. I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.
Jon Meacham
#71. One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well; I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.
Jon Meacham
#72. Extremists often derive their inspiration from literal interpretations of texts that should rightly be read not as Associated Press reports from the ancient world, but as theological and literary enterprises requiring independent intellectual assessment.
Jon Meacham
#73. Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.
Jon Meacham
#74. Leadership meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.
Jon Meacham
#75. Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment.
Jon Meacham
#76. The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord.
Jon Meacham
#77. An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias
Jon Meacham
#78. Or, as Jackson would have said: The people, sir-the people will set things right.
Jon Meacham
#79. It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. - THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion
Jon Meacham
#80. It's Shakespeare, to have a single family in which human flaws and virtues are on such vivid display - and the constant struggle between those vices and those virtues to try to do good and fulfill one's duty.
Jon Meacham
#81. Respect, that most prized of commodities, came from achievement. The better you did - the
Jon Meacham
#82. Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. ... 1 Nothing is required for this enlightenment ... except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. - IMMANUEL KANT, What Is Enlightenment?
Jon Meacham
#83. We are exceptional not because of who we are but because of what we do and how we put the ideals of human dignity, individual freedom, and liberty under law into action.
Jon Meacham
#84. Politics was at once clinical and human, driven by principles and passions that he (the leader) had to master and harness for the good of the whole.
Jon Meacham
#85. Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances permit, but when the time for action has come, stop thinking. (Andrew Jackson)
Jon Meacham
#86. Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them - take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.
Jon Meacham
#87. Barack Obama is many things; among them, he is a tough and even ferocious political warrior.
Jon Meacham
#88. One of the earliest resurrection scenes in the Bible is that of Thomas demanding evidence - he wanted to see, to touch, to prove. Those who question and probe and debate are heirs of the apostles just as much as the most fervent of believers.
Jon Meacham
#89. A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?
Jon Meacham
#90. The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time.
Jon Meacham
#91. As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom - not least freedom of conscience.
Jon Meacham
#92. Political war was to be the rule, not the exception, in American life. "The country is so totally given up to the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfold the one or the other is an inexpiable offense," Adams wrote during Jefferson's first term.12
Jon Meacham
#93. In rich and captivating prose, Jessica DuLong kindly invites the rest of us on the journey of her lifetime: from a dot-com job to the fabled waters of the Hudson River, where she became a fireboat engineer. This is an unusual and fascinating book.
Jon Meacham
#94. Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably won't work for you either.
Jon Meacham
#95. Reagan is the Republican FDR, an exemplar of presidential greatness.
Jon Meacham
#96. Liberty is precious. But so is life. It should not be so difficult for men and women of good will and good heart and sound mind to find the right balance between the two.
Jon Meacham
#97. Finally, at one p.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 180161, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson prevailed. R
Jon Meacham
#98. The moment illuminates the political Jefferson - a man who got his way quietly but unmistakably, without bluster or bombast, his words congenial but his will unwavering.
Jon Meacham
#99. The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: one of the choice ones of the earth.
Jon Meacham
#100. Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.
Jon Meacham
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