206 Quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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.

No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.

Johnson insisted, “I don’t want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven’t done nearly enough. I’m kind of ashamed of myself that I had six years and couldn’t do more than I did.

They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind. In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.

Chance had placed him in the catapult and now it was up to the vagaries of history to cut the catapult’s rope.

It is surprising,” Roosevelt explained, “how much reading a man can do in time usually wasted.

It is seldom that persons who enjoy intervals of public life are happy in their periods of seclusion.

The only question now,” he said, “is which corpse gets the most flowers.

The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country.