227 Quotes by Jon Meacham

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.2 – American motto suggested.

We cannot guarantee equal outcomes, but we must do all we can to ensure equal opportunity.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, ‘Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned?’ The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. ‘Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

At seventy-five, Churchill said: “I am prepared to meet my Maker. But whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I do not believe ‘Newsweek’ is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them, and I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

The world was not perfect, nor was it perfectible, but on we went, in the face of inequities and inequalities, seeking to expand freedom at home, to defend liberty abroad, to conquer disease and go to the stars. For notably among nations, the United States has long been shaped by the promise, if not always by the reality, of forward motion, of rising greatness, and of the expansion of knowledge, of wealth, and of happiness.

Preparing for the Kingdom of God meant making the world as like unto that Kingdom as possible, and the Kingdom was to be a new reality of restoration, redemption, renewal, and resurrection.

The author of the document would one day come to believe that it was sacred scripture and that his writing desk was a holy object.

Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think.