Douglas Brinkley Quotes

Politicians wanted to mine the Grand Canyon for zinc and copper, and Theodore Roosevelt said no.

I learned more about history and literature in the used bookstores in DC than in college libraries.

John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt.

Hurricane Katrina is without question the worst natural disaster in American history.

I think Ronald Reagan is what happened....The age of Reagan brought conservatism into the mainstream....It also brought us the beginning of the new media-talk radio, the internet, cable television.

It is a long revisionist road up from the bottom for George W. Bush. He is ranked toward the bottom rung of presidents.

John Kerry can be absolutely ruthless. I would not want to be on his enemies list when he's ready to go after you.

There is nobody that's ever going to fill Ted Kennedy's shoes, and that's a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

Demeanor-wise, Reagan was a conservative, but a pragmatic conservative, and he found silver linings in things. He liked to be a mediator. He didn't like to have enemies around him.

I feel like I'm always learning from people.

If you're a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you're treated as royalty. And in the United States, we're endlessly fascinated by the family.

Animals interest me more than anything else.

Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.

I have a lot of books I want to write.

Cronkite is not a genius at anything except being straight, honest, and normal.

There is no real way to categorize McLean's 'American Pie' for its hybrid of modern poetry and folk ballad, beer-hall chant and high-art rock.

John Kerry had a very vivid imagination as a young person. I mean, he actually did go and take his bicycle from Norway to go camp in Sherwood Forest to be around the ghost of Robin Hood.

The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond.

Stubbornness is a positive quality of presidential leadership - if you're right about what you're stubborn about.

One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge.

Cronkite was always one step short of disillusionment.

If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh 500 pounds.

Unlike most fine writers, he wasn't in love with his own words.

When he (Walter Cronkite) drank, he had an appetite for both history and political bullshit.