Jon Meacham Quotes

We often talk too much & listen too little. The surer route to winning a friend isn't to convince them that you're right, but that you care what they think.

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.

[T]o argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt.

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

Liberty is precious. But so is life. It should not be so difficult for men and women of good will and good heart and sound mind to find the right balance between the two.

In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.

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

World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.

The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.

The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way.

Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.

Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.

An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.

Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably won't work for you either.

I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.

Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.

Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.

The government invented the Internet.

One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well; I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.

Reagan is the Republican FDR, an exemplar of presidential greatness.

Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts.

An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure.

Barack Obama is many things; among them, he is a tough and even ferocious political warrior.

The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.

I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day.

The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.

I do not believe 'Newsweek' is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we're one of them, and I don't think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

President Obama is now losing to 'Republican Nominee' in polls - no name needed.

We are exceptional not because of who we are but because of what we do and how we put the ideals of human dignity, individual freedom, and liberty under law into action.

The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.

As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom - not least freedom of conscience.

Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

Jefferson was ambivalent about executive power – until he bore executive responsibility.

Politics was at once clinical and human, driven by principles and passions that he (the leader) had to master and harness for the good of the whole.

Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances permit, but when the time for action has come, stop thinking. (Andrew Jackson)