I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.
The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
We’ve got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We’re not gonna get the best people in public life if we don’t do that.
I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.
Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.
Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country – bigger than all the Presidents together.
I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment.
People tease me about knowing somehow that Obama would put Clinton into the cabinet, and everybody would talk about a team of rivals.
Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.
Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.
The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.
Where’s the progress that we’re going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.
As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.
A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.
I’ve been to the White House a number of times.
I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.
I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.
Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian’s research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.
In order to “win a man to your cause,” Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, “the great high road to his reason.