H.W. Brands

Quotes

• “It is more important to me that my students come out of my class believing 'This story is interesting and I might want t...”
• “Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adultho...”
• “Bushes may not be eloquent explaining emotion, but George HW Bush's mother knew enough to be in position with her childr...”
• “Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might...”
• “In the immediate aftermath of the great Chicago fire, a business proprietor erected a shack in front of his burned-out b...”
• “The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically co...”
• “It may be that the voice of the people is the voice of God 51 times out of 100. But the remaining 49 times, it is the vo...”
• “The very lack of explicit pressure was itself a compelling force, for it created a world in which the expectation of suc...”
• “I believe the road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master IN THAT LINE. I have no faith in the pol...”
• “I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the nex...”
• “It's philanthropy, but it's good politics, too. Mighty good politics. The poor are some of the most grateful people in t...”
• “The sight of big ships, of the many new uniforms, at once serious and cool, left Bush with an overall sense of the navy'...”
• “He has not shown the special interest in reading that we should like to see but he likes shop work. George H. W. Bush's ...”
• “Theodore Roosevelt came to Dekota to experience the dying of one age with the slaying of a rare buffalo and the dawning ...”
• “William "Boss" Tweed was in such thorough control in New York that he made money off of the report the committee printed...”
• “The first 10 days of a cattle drive were the most critical, as a stampede was most likely when the cattle were closest t...”
• “Soldiers in foreign camps, so far from being missionaries for good, require missionaries themselves, more than the nativ...”
• “When speculators have once entered Wall Street, they never leave it except in a pine box or a rosewood case, according t...”
• “One with God is always a majority. But many have been burned at the stake while the boats were being counted. Thomas Ree...”
• “The horizons of man are incomparably narrower than that of the land on which he toils. Editor of the Nebraska journal”
• “He had always had a gift for conjuring images in his mind's eye. It was one of the secrets of his military success.”
• “A live-in domestic worker: "You are never sure that your soul is your own except when you are out of the house.”
• “Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. Ralph Waldo Emerson”
• “Once information slipped the bonds of gravity and friction, it tended to gather where it was most valuable.”
• “He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view.”
• “Reagan is described as "delivering Barry Goldwater's doctrine with John F. Kennedy's technique.”
• “He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.”
• “Warner Studios official in the era of silent movies: Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
• “Grant made the perfect candidate, a war hero with indistinct views on most political issues.”
• “John D Rockefeller read his Bible religiously, but kept his ledger in a different drawer.”
• “His notes to the outside world offered a window on an active, sympathetic, eclectic mind.”
• “He (the immigrant father) would walk by proxy in the Elysian fields of liberal learning.”
• “He was a product of a culture where it was generally counterproductive to hold grudges.”
• “Both sides had more confidence in their opponents' weaknesses than their own strength.”
• “Shiloh showed him what he could ask of his men, and indeed what he MUST ask of them.”
• “This senate was a place where good Representatives went when they died. Thomas Reed”
• “When he came in first, he was happy to find all sorts of meaning in the results.”
• “Employment was better than idleness for men, because it kept the enemy guessing.”
• “A young mark twain on the make: "I can't turn in inkstand into Aladdin's lamp.”
• “Time after time during the next six months, he would put me together again.”
• “Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else.”
• “The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity.”
• “Such was the code: Strive for victory, but never seem to be self-involved.”
• “He was trying to find his footing in a world both familiar and foreign”
• “Chinese immigrant: "Americans make a mere practice of loving justice.”
• “There was so much – so many tests and tasks, so many tiny referenda.”
• “Gold, or at least the prospect of it, saved him, then killed him.”
• “I can see that spark coming back when he talks about the future.”
• “He was like a man thinking on an abstract subject all the time.”
• “Amid the war the capitalists were asserting national necessity.”