Doris Kearns Goodwin

“For your penance, say two Hail Marys, three our Fathers, and," he added, with a chuckle, "say a special prayer for the…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” he wrote. “I have no other so great as that of being truly…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,’ ”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“When he first returned to the Badlands in the summer of 1884, the austere landscape seemed to mirror his melancholy.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“In the reflected gaze of his (her husband's) steady admiration, she saw the face of the girl he had fallen in love…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream.

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“A prominent Chicago politician, Justin Butterfield, asked if he was against the Mexican War, replied: “no, I opposed one War [the War…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

(from John Hay's diary) “The President never appeared to better advantage in the world,” Hay proudly noted in his diary. “Though He…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

I've chosen to be a commentator and an analyzer of politics, rather than an actual doer of it. I think it could…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract,” he noted, “to require that when men receive from government the…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Chase has fallen into two bad habits… . He thinks he has become indispensable to the country… . He also thinks he…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“By privately endorsing Seward’s spirit of compromise while projecting an unyielding public image, President-elect Lincoln retained an astonishing degree of control over…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

There is a sense of feeling larger than your own life when you're in some common mission together. You have to hope…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Sam Parks was simply a paid agent for his union, receiving the same salary as an ordinary workman in his trade. In…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“We have the right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not only suspicion, but almost a certainty…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

What I learned, more than anything, was that you can't have it all balanced perfectly at any one time. When I was…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

While its [Harvard's] undergraduate life was still controlled [in 1908-1912] by a select group of rich and fashionable families whose sons merely…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“With McClure’s support, Steffens embarked on an odyssey. For the better part of three years, he called on people in St. Louis,…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“To illustrate the marked atmospheric contrast between the two cities, the writer Frank Carpenter observed that in New York, “a streetcar will…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

all through my childhood, my father kept from me the knowledge that the daily papers printed daily box scores, allowing me to…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Modernizing the postal service was particularly important for the soldiers, who relied on letters, newspapers, and magazines from home to sustain morale.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Moreover, he objected, “I have never done an official act with a view to promote my own personal aggrandizement, and I don’t…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Will wrote frequently to Nellie, describing his daily routine in detail only a lover would not find exhausting.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: "He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Walt Whitman, who worked as a nurse in the hospital wards, that the harrowing experience made one’s “little cares and difficulties” disappear…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Roosevelt had defined the public interest in the previously private struggle between labor and capital.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“There I go When my heart all worn by grief Sinketh low. Where my baseless hopes do lie There to find my…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“To find the best authors,” he boasted, “is like being able to tell good wine without the labels.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

Journalists were at the forefront. From the Civil War until the early 1900s, nothing was being done to solve the problems of…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Lincoln's ability to retain his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in actute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel…

— Doris Kearns Goodwin