It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed, Abigail Adams wrote to her son John Quincy Adams in the midst of the American Revolution, sug...
Indeed, the leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow that can be done to-day. The key to success, he insisted, is work, work, work.
I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.
I hated to have us take the Philippines, but I don’t see how in the world we can give them up.
Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacke...
His success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality—kindness, se...
FORTY THOUSAND VISITORS descended upon Chicago in the middle of May 1860, drawn
Each party profited by the offices when in power, Roosevelt explained, and when in opposition each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it itself had done and intended agai...
Do leaders shape the times or do the times summon their leaders?
Corinne suggested a different reason, indicating that her dying father had expressed concern about Theodore’s intimacy with Edith, given Charles Carow’s fiscal and temperamental instability. If Theodo...
By appealing to the moral and philosophical foundation work of the nation, Lincoln hoped to provide common ground on which good men in both the North and the South could stand. I am not now combating...
Before any outcome was made public, the radicals had worked themselves into a fury of rage, certain that the president was about to give up the political fruits which had been already gathered
Avoid dull facts; create memorable images; translate every issue into people’s lives; use simple, everyday language; never use big words when small words will do. Simplify the concept that we are tryi...
Assemblyman Isaac Hunt, who later became a close friend, would never forget the first time he saw Roosevelt. He came in as if he had been ejected by a catapult, Hunt recalled.
All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of him; they were uniformly good-natured. Caricatures even transformed hi...
All one can do is to prepare oneself, to wait in readiness for what might come.
From John Hay's diary) The President never appeared to better advantage in the world, Hay proudly noted in his diary. Though He knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of...
The American people are strange in their attitudes toward their idols," he (Taft) mused. They lead them on and then "cut their legs from under them," simply "to make their fall all the greater.
As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.