Quotes by Jon Meacham

“They wanted to kill each other, or to kill for each other.”

“They enjoyed each other and they liked each others company. They got along brilliantly.”

“Roosevelt could be very cold.”

“The powerful emotional connection between Roosevelt and Churchill and how they confronted tyranny and terror is an incredibly contemporary story that yields important lessons for leaders today on a personal, political, and diplomatic level.”

“But they had a fight about it. That sounds awfully familiar, doesnt it?”

“Too many activists have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth. A little humility and a sense of history could move us all forward.”

Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

He was the most contradictory of men. A champion of extending freedom and democracy to even the poorest of whites, Jackson was an unrepentant slaveholder. A sentimental man who rescued an Indian orphan on a battlefield to raise in his home, Jackson was responsible for the removal of Indian tribes from their ancestral lands. An enemy of Eastern financial elites and a relentless opponent of the Bank of the United States, which he believed to be a bastion of corruption, Jackson also promised to die, if necessary, to preserve the power and prestige of the central government. Like us and our America, Jackson and his America achieved great things while committing grievous sins.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned? The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances permit, but when the time for action has come, stop thinking. (Andrew Jackson)

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

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.

As much as Jefferson loved France residence abroad gave him greater appreciation for his own nation. He was a tireless advocate for things American while abroad, and a promoter of things European while at home. Moving between two worlds, translating the best of the old into the new and explaining the benefits of the new to the old, he created a role for himself as both intermediary and arbiter.

In the closed circle of the war cabinet, pounded by terrible report after terrible report, there had been uncertainty about whether he could fend off the drift to exploring a deal with Hitler. The determination of the larger group trumped the tentativeness of the smaller, and Churchill fulfilled his role as leader by disentangling himself from defeatism--one of his singular achievements at the end of May 1940.

Democracy is easy; republicanism is hard. Democracy is fueled by passion; republicanism is founded on moderation. Democracy is loud, raucous, disorderly; republicanism is quiet, cool, judicious – and that we still live in its light is the Founders most wondrous deed.

Jefferson was ambivalent about executive power – until he bore executive responsibility.

For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believed Williamsburg the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America.

He turned the presidency – and the Presidents House – into something it had not been before: a center of curiosity and inquiry, of vibrant institution that played informal but important roles in the broader life of the nation, from science to literature.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye, Jefferson said.