227 Quotes by Jon Meacham

It's Shakespeare, to have a single family in which human flaws and virtues are on such vivid display—and the constant struggle between those vices and those virtues to try to do good and fulfill one's duty.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

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.

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.

A small thing, but in a dissonant world, every moment of harmony counts--and if we share music, we might just shout in anger a little less and sing in unity more. Or so we can hope.

There's something about the transporting capacity of music, something about it's odd but undeniable ability to create a collective experience by firing our individual imaginations, that's more likely to open our minds and our hearts to competing points of view.

A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.

Broadly put, philosophers think: politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come.