Quotes by

Jon Meacham

Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didnt work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably wont work for you either. – Jon Meacham

Attacks on a politicians identity – questioning Romneys religion, say, or Obamas birthplace – tend to come when an opponent is desperate and cant sell himself. – Jon Meacham

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, regulation is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with – how to put it? – evangelical fervor. – Jon Meacham

If a person is homosexual by nature – that is, if ones sexuality is as intrinsic a part of ones identity as gender or skin color – then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow. – Jon Meacham

Part of what I loved – and love – about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. Im interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. Im interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books. – Jon Meacham

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. Well all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next. – Jon Meacham

As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, Americas unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom – not least freedom of conscience. – Jon Meacham

In America, now, let us – Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever – fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love ones enemies. A tall order, that – perhaps the tallest of all. – Jon Meacham

The traditional religious rights failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school. – Jon Meacham

The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life. – Jon Meacham

The attacks of September 11 – and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood, Texas – embody the most repulsive of human instincts, the will to power at the price of the lives of others. – Jon Meacham

A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along? – Jon Meacham

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. – Jon Meacham

The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord. – Jon Meacham

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

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

With the perspective afforded by the passage of time, where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families, innocents going about their lives, suddenly and brutally murdered, no other day can ever matter as much. – Jon Meacham

The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness. – Jon Meacham

The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war, but in a wary, if often underplayed, alliance. History is unmistakable on this point. – Jon Meacham

History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other? – Jon Meacham