History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged.… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. —THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion” — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“Broadly put, philosophers think: politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“Horace Walpole, the writer and politician, meanwhile, once saw Mademoiselle la Chevalière d’Éon, known in her day as a transvestite-diplomat-spy, teaching fencing… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great,… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“politics is brutal because it engages the most fundamental human impulses for affection, honor, power, and fame. Great principles and grand visions… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.” — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“A high-flying politician,” Hopkinson wrote, “is I think not unlike a balloon—he is full of inflammability, he is driven along by every… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters.… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“Harry Truman—the man who won the four-way 1948 presidential campaign, triumphing over the segregationist Thurmond, the Progressive candidate Henry A. Wallace, and… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war,… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
America has long raised political and cultural cognitive dissonance to an art form. We are capable of living with enormous inequality and… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“The Jefferson style – cultivate his elders, make himself pleasant to his contemporaries, and used his pen and his intellect to shape… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. "The way to… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“It was easy to speak theoretically and idealistically about politics when one is seeking power. The demands of exercising it once it… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“Politics was at once clinical and human, driven by principles and passions that he (the leader) had to master and harness for… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets. — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“I hate polemical politics and polemical divinity,” said John Adams. “My religion is founded on the love of God and my neighbor;… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason. — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse. — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“his other hand. Sensitive to his guest’s affliction, Churchill realized that “every step” was” — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
Too many activists have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth. A little humility and a sense of history could move us… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes. — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“When Lincoln was running for the House of Representatives from Illinois, he was charged with being “a scoffer at religion,” wrote the historian William… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“The Man who has not Music in his Soul, Or is not touch’d with Concord of sweet Sounds, Is fit for Treason, Stratagems, and… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
“There was, of course, a more immediate point to frequent gatherings of lawmakers, diplomats, and cabinet officers at the president’s table. It tends to… — Jon Meacham Copy Share Image
