227 Quotes by Jon Meacham

Part of what I loved – and love – about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I’m interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I’m interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief – a critical test for many Americans.

Asked whether history had ever seen anything like the Depression, John Maynard Keynes replied: “Yes. It was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.

The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. – FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.

The message of Martin Luther King, Jr. – that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin – dwells in the American soul; so does the menace of the Ku Klux Klan. History hangs precariously in the balance between such extremes. Our fate is contingent upon which element – that of hope or that of fear – emerges triumphant.

We truly believed that we were on God’s side, and in spite of everything – the beatings, the bombings, the burnings – God’s truth would prevail,” Lewis recalled. The anguish and the duration of the struggle was, in a way, a vindication of the premise of the struggle itself – that this was the ultimate battle to bring light to darkness no matter how often darkness prevailed.

Democracy is easy; republicanism is hard. Democracy is fueled by passion; republicanism is founded on moderation. Democracy is loud, raucous, disorderly; republicanism is quiet, cool, judicious – and that we still live in its light is the Founders’ most wondrous deed.

Dignified theatricality is an essential element of power.

Arguing for black enfranchisement in 1867, Frederick Douglass said: “If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations.