If defeat is an orphan, the old saying goes, victory has a thousand fathers,
If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too careful, calculating, cautious in word and act.
I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,’
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.
I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that,
His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization—the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding up of voter...
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 wit...
Everything was of interest to him, marveled the French ambassador, Jean Jules Jusserand, people of today, people of yesterday, animals, minerals, stones, stars, the past, the future.
At last, the crowd composed itself enough for Roosevelt to speak. At present, he began, both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes. Toge...
Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Do the times make the leader or does the leader shape the times? How can a leader infuse a...
Although the guilty verdict surprised few, the size of the resulting fine stunned the company and the country. For each of the 1,462 carloads of oil that had enjoyed an illegal rebate, Landis levied t...
A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.
Taft's mother's) losing her firstborn had convinced her that children are treasures lent not given and that they may be recalled at any time. Parents, she firmly believed, could never love their child...
Lincoln reflecting on) George Washington's words: It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that...
We have a solemn responsibility to cooperate with the President and produce a program that is neither his blueprint nor our blueprint but a combination of the two.
No one knew better than Lincoln that words have consequences. In a world of tinder, he was determined to hold his rhetorical gifts in abeyance in order to reach across factions and avoid a single spar...
Immediately allayed his fears, he gratefully recalled, by the raillery
If ever an argument can be made for the conclusive importance of the character and intelligence of the leader in fraught times, at home and abroad, it will come to rest on the broad shoulders of Frank...
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.
While some men, he observed, were naturally fearless, he had to train his soul and spirit as well as his body. So, constantly forcing himself to do the difficult or even dangerous thing, he gradually...