227 Quotes by Jon Meacham

The distinctive feature of that religion lies in the meaning of the verse from Leviticus: that individual liberty for all – all, of any color or creed – is at the very center of the broad faith the Founders nurtured and passed on to us.

The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing.

In the charged and complicated spheres of identity, politics, philosophy, and power in America, though, racism was not situational but systemic.

The Man who has not Music in his Soul, Or is not touch’d with Concord of sweet Sounds, Is fit for Treason, Stratagems, and Spoils, The Motions of his Mind are dull as Night, And his Affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted.

All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.

Songs are the soul of movement! – MLK Jr.

It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. – THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible,” the theologian and thinker Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1944, “but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

As a rule, politicians tend to remember the things they wish to emulate or the things they hope to avoid.