Top 100 Kearns Goodwin Quotes
#1. Since Obama has expressed admiration for the portrait of Abraham Lincoln that Doris Kearns Goodwin paints in 'Team of Rivals,' he could do the 16th president one better: He should name Hillary Clinton as his running mate in 2012. That would be both needed change and audacious.
Douglas Wilder
#2. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln BY DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
Daniel H. Pink
#3. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals is instructive in painting a realistic portrayal of Lincoln and his methods for accomplishing his objectives. In fact, many good political biographies are useful in learning about power, strategy, and decision-making.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
#4. Not only was he one of history's greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln was one of history's most devoted readers. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of Lincoln, "Books became his academy, his college. The printed word united his mind with the great minds of generations past.
Pat Williams
#5. There will be some one at the White House whom you will like more than me," Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, "but not one who will interest you more.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#6. After ministering each day to the hundreds of young men who had endured ghastly wounds, submitted to amputations without anesthesia, and often died without the comfort of family or friends, Whitman wrote, nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it used to.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#8. The people "placed me in an office of the highest dignity and charged me with the duty of maintaining that dignity and proper respect for the office on the part of my subordinates. . . . By your own conduct you have destroyed your usefulness as a helpful subordinate.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#9. The politician, Johnson's experience had taught him, could make promises without keeping them; words spoken in public had little relation to the practical conduct of daily life. But whatever justification a politician may claim for deceptions, the statesman must align his words with his action.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#11. I'm giving my whole life to breaking the butterfly of a John Rockefeller upon the wheel of my ponderous articles,
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#12. I write about presidents. That means I write about guys - so far. I'm interested in the people closest to them, the people they love and the people they've lost ... I don't want to limit it to what they did in the office, but what happens at home and in their interactions with other people.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#13. And Lincoln, as would be evidenced throughout his presidency, was a master of timing.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#14. Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#15. I find that without a place to work, it is difficult to work. I look forward with the greatest pleasure to the use of my books at night at home.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#16. That very afternoon, Taft fell seriously ill with what doctors mistakenly diagnosed as dengue fever. He remained bedridden for ten days, and when he returned to work, severe rectal pain prevented him from sitting. At the same time, a fungal infection developed in his groin.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#17. Fearing that Taft would be too reticent on the stump, Roosevelt barraged him with incessant advice. "Do not answer Bryan; attack him!" he counseled in early September, adding, "Don't let him make the issues.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#18. The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#19. FDR once said he was like a cat, that he would pounce and then relax. That's much harder to do in the 24-hour cable world, because it's almost like the press demands of you to be saying something or doing something every day.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#20. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#21. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#22. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#23. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#24. When Taft gives way to his (anger), one reporter observed, it is to inflict a merciless thrashing upon its victim, for whom thereafter he has no use whatsoever. With Roosevelt is a case of powder and spark; there is a vivid flash and a deafening roar, but when the smoke is blown away, it is the end.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#25. Admiral Dahlgren's twenty-one-year-old son, Ulric, had lost a leg at Gettysburg. When he appeared at a Washington party, he was surrounded by pretty girls. They stayed by his side all night, refusing to dance, in tribute to the handsome colonel who had been known as an expert waltzer.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#26. Modernizing the postal service was particularly important for the soldiers, who relied on letters, newspapers, and magazines from home to sustain morale.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#27. I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#28. There are but a handful of times in the history of our country when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#29. Walt Whitman, who worked as a nurse in the hospital wards, that the harrowing experience made one's "little cares and difficulties" disappear "into nothing.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#31. It is surprising," Roosevelt explained, "how much reading a man can do in time usually wasted.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#32. 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?
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#33. For your penance, say two Hail Marys, three our Fathers, and," he added, with a chuckle, "say a special prayer for the Dodgers.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#34. White vividly recalled sitting "pop-eyed with wonder" at the edge of his chair while Roosevelt spoke "with a kind of dynamic, burning candor" about his plans.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#35. As S. S. McClure well understood, the "vitality of democracy" depends on "popular knowledge of complex questions." At
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#36. Nevertheless, no other speech proved so effective, none so full of character and none which found so responsive an audience. It carried everything before it, and old campaigners sighed that such energy was beyond them.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#37. Still, Roosevelt noted, it was "not always easy to strike the just middle," and he inevitably made mistakes.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#38. Still, slander against the president and first lady continued to fill the columns of opposition papers.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#39. On a hot summer night in July 1836, an organized mob broke into the shop where the abolitionist weekly was printed, dismantled the press, and tore up the edition that was about to be circulated.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#40. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#41. It is seldom that persons who enjoy intervals of public life are happy in their periods of seclusion.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#44. FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#45. I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing I take more seriously.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#46. The press of visitors, a New York Times reporter observed, never seemed "to try the President's strength or impair his good temper." At one o'clock, Roosevelt
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#47. I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#48. The young man never seemed to know what idleness was," marveled Cutler, "and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#49. Sam Parks was simply a paid agent for his union, receiving the same salary as an ordinary workman in his trade. In reality, Baker tracked him "riding about in his cab, wearing diamonds, appearing on the street with his blooded bulldog, supporting his fast horses, 'treating' his friends.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#50. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#51. The sad and poignant thing for Johnson, however, was not his anti-intellectualism in itself but his need to be accepted by the very people he scorned.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#53. Even Roosevelt, with his singular disciplined drive, managed to quit work early four or five afternoons each week for a game of tennis or jog through Rock Creek Park before heading
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#54. I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#55. I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#56. When resentment and contention threatened to destroy his administration, he refused to be provoked by petty grievances, to submit to jealousy, or to brood over perceived slights. Through the appalling pressures he faced day after day, he retained an unflagging faith in his country's cause.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#58. I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#59. One-time rival and subsequent usurper Secretary of State Seward finally settled into an assessment of Lincoln that, His confidence and compassion increase every day.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#62. In the reflected gaze of his (her husband's) steady admiration, she saw the face of the girl he had fallen in love with.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#63. If he (Teddy Roosevelt) lacked Will Taft's immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#64. I hated to have us take the Philippines, but I don't see how in the world we can give them up.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#65. They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#66. Elizabeth Blair of brother Frank: he could not let even a great man set his small dogs on him without kicking the dog & giving his master some share of the resentment.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#67. As soon as (Teddy Roosevelt) received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Prepared so far ahead "freed his mind" from worry and facilitated fresh, lucid thought.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#68. The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#69. It was Andrew Jackson's motto, he reminded, that if you temporize, you are lost.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#70. 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
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#71. Roosevelt had defined the public interest in the previously private struggle between labor and capital.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#72. Teddy Roosevelt "had relished "every hour" of every day as president. Indeed, (he was) fearing the "dull thud" he would experience upon returning to private life.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#74. Eleanor had defended over the years, that the money spent on arms would be much better spent on education and medical care.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#76. What is clear is that at some point my father determined he would write the story of his life himself, rather than let it be written for him by his tortured past. And this resolve was the greatest gift he bequeathed to his children.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#77. We should constantly be reminded of what we owe in return for what we have.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#78. Journalists were at the forefront. From the Civil War until the early 1900s, nothing was being done to solve the problems of the Industrial Age.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#79. We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#80. Roosevelt and Root deputized Taft to inform the Holy See that the United States would purchase the lands for a fair price so long as the hated friars never returned to the archipelago. The land would then be redistributed among the poor Filipino farmers.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#81. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#82. As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#85. Spring had come to Washington. The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Yet the glacial mood of the capital refused to melt. Accusations
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#87. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#88. He cannot speak clearly if his words must be strained through a Congressional gag.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#89. 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.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#90. I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#91. Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#92. For recreation, Lincoln took up bowling with his fellow boarders. Though a clumsy bowler, according to Dr. Busey, Lincoln "played the game with great zest and spirit" and "accepted success and defeat with like good nature and humor.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#94. Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#96. When he first returned to the Badlands in the summer of 1884, the austere landscape seemed to mirror his melancholy.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#98. I read them (articles TR wrote on his honeymoon) all over to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#99. Taft generally ate alone. Forever struggling to lose weight, he limited his midday meal to an apple or a glass of water.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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