59 Quotes by Amity Shlaes

Once, on a walk with the president, Senator Selden Spencer of Missouri tried to cheer Coolidge by pointing to the White House and asking, in a joking tone, who might live there. “Nobody,” Coolidge replied, “they just come and go.

Perhaps the deepest reason for Coolidge’s recent obscurity is that the thirtieth president spoke a different economic language from ours. He did not say “money supply”; he said “credit.” He did not say “the federal government”; he said “the national government.” He did not say “private sector”; he said “commerce.” He did not say “savings”; he said “thrift” or “economy.” Indeed, he especially cherished the word “economy” because it came from the Greek for.

Coolidge had ladled out his share of mockery, especially in college, but could see now that attack politics yielded poor results. The best way to win was to stick to the issues and forgo any personal attacks or name-calling. Civility would be his rule from now on. He would try it out in his next campaign, for the office of state representative in Boston.

Surveying the travails of the thirtieth president, some writers have suggested that those personal defeats are the essence of the Coolidge story. They err. Coolidge’s is not a story of “Yes, but.” It is a story of “But yes.” For at every stage, Coolidge did push forward, and so triumph.

With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.'