Establish a clear purpose; challenge the team to work out details; traverse conventional departmental boundaries; set large short-term and long-term targets; create tangible success to generate accele...
Democratic periodicals in the North warned that the governor’s stance would compromise highly profitable New York trade connections with Virginia and other slave states. Seward was branded a bigoted N...
But unlike the electric excitement that had filled the room four years earlier, when Nellie had sparkled with happiness and Taft had laughed with the joy of a boy, both the president and first lady cl...
But the same personal charm that had propelled Taft to the presidency ultimately proved dangerous to him, Baker concluded. For far too long, his amiable nature had kept him from the rough-and-tumble o...
Before his marriage Lincoln enjoyed close relations with young women and almost certainly found outlets for his sexual urges among the prostitutes who were readily available on the frontier.
At the time the Constitution was adopted, Lincoln pointed out, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity, since slav...
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...
As governor general of the Philippines, Taft had welcomed every political group at Malacañan Palace, making it a rule never to pay any attention to personal squabbles and differences.
As S. S. McClure well understood, the vitality of democracy depends on popular knowledge of complex questions. At
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...
American philosopher William James wrote of the mysterious formation of identity, that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, w...
Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheet a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character.
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 wr...
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.
A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take them.
A five minute speech, he pointed out, with fifteen minutes spent afterward is much more effective than a fifteen minute speech, no matter how inspiring, that leaves only five minutes for handshaking.
We should look beyond our noses;
It was not only the executive’s right but his responsibility to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.
Grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
Wherever a tension needed the solvent of good-will, or friction the oil of benevolence; wherever suspicion needed the antidote of frankness, or wounded pride the disinfectant of a hearty laugh—there T...