The key to Lincoln’s success was his uncanny ability to break down the most complex case or issue into its simplest elements. He never lost a jury by fumbling with or reading from a prepared argument,...
The history of governments, John Hay later observed, affords few instances of an official connection hallowed by a friendship so absolute and sincere as that which existed between these two magnanimou...
The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the bully pulpit, a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to...
The domestic scene, she admitted, referring not only to the coal dispute but to a rash of racial disturbances that had recently broken out, is anything but encouraging and one would like not to think...
The choice of Blaine speaks badly for the intelligence of the mass of my party, he ruefully continued. It may be that ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’ in fifty one cases out of a hundred;...
The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to edu...
The U.S. Senate presented the most powerful obstacle to any progressive reform.
The American people, Johnson continued, are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders—people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive.
The American people, Johnson continued, are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders—people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive. They will turn their ba...
That was my first lesson in real politics. . . . If you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why, go make the best one you can. It would be...
Testing his image in Hartford, he would refine it further in subsequent speeches. If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, Lincoln began, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and k...
Taft generally ate alone. Forever struggling to lose weight, he limited his midday meal to an apple or a glass of water.
Seward’s only hope for reelection lay in Weed’s ability to cobble together an antislavery majority from among the various discordant elements in the state legislature. In the weeks before the legislat...
Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth. More important t...
Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, but not one who will interest you more.
Regardless of one’s impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.
More and more it seems to me that about the best thing in life is to have a piece of work worth doing and then to do it well.
Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were troublemakers, more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tan...
It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, he observed, that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations o...
In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant’s behavior, however, they had concluded that his drinking did not affect h...