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
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. – 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
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
One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, – to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization. – John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones