Background Image
...
As A Historian, What I Trust Is My Ability To Take A Mass Of Information And Tell A Story Shaped Around It.
-Doris Kearns Goodwin
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

As A Historian, What

Doris Kearns Goodwin
...
As A Historian, What I Trust Is My Ability To Take A Mass Of Information And Tell A Story Shaped Around It.

Understanding the Quote: "as a historian, what i trust is my ability to take a..."

This quote by Doris Kearns Goodwin reflects deeply on the theme of stories. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Stories, Information, Mass, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Doris Kearns Goodwin interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin is celebrated for insightful thoughts on stories and information. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 80312
Topic
Stories
Information
Mass
More From Doris Kearns Goodwin
Whatever It Is That You Do, If You Have That Passion And Desire For It, That's The Most Important Thing.
Passion
Important
Desire
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.
Responsibility
Wish
Figures
Many Kids Think Unless They Go To One Of These Great Ivy League Schools, Which I Was Lucky Enough To Go To Later, That They Won't Get The Same Kind Of Learning. But I Learned Just The Opposite Lesson; That My Best Teachers Were Not At Harvard University.
Teacher
Kids
School
I Keep Thinking That History Runs In Cycles, And That Some Day Certain Large Issues Will Come Before The Country Again. There Will Be Leaders That Inspire Young People. I Don't Think It Means That It's Over Forever, But I'm Getting Pretty Impatient. I'm Hoping It Comes Soon, So That My Young People Can Know That Experience That We Knew In The '60s, And That The World War Ii Generation Knew During The '40s.
Country
Running
War
The Past Is Not Simply The Past, But A Prism Through Which The Subject Filters His Own Changing Self-image.
Past
Self
Filters
As A Historian, What I Trust Is My Ability To Take A Mass Of Information And Tell A Story Shaped Around It.
Stories
Information
Mass
The One Thing That John Kennedy Did, Above All Else, Was To Energize Young People To Feel That They Wanted To Give Something To Their Country. I Just Hope, For Young People Of This Generation, That They'll Experience That Feeling Once Again, That By Working On Large Goals, They Can Do Something More Than Their Own Individual Ambition.
Country
Ambition
People
You Can't Start Out At 20 In Whatever Your Profession Is And Say, "i Want To Win An Olympic Medal," Or "i Want To Become President," Or "i Want To Win The Pulitzer Prize." If You Love What You're Doing, It's Sort Of A Nice Thing That Happens Toward The End Of Your Career, Or In The Middle Of Your Career. It Is Not The Reason You Were Doing It. The Reason You Were Doing It Is Because Every Day You Wake Up In The Morning And You Can't Wait To Learn Something New.
Morning
Nice
Winning
When You Are An Historian, There's Probably Nothing That Matters More Than To Be Recognized By Your Colleagues In Your Own Profession. I Was Lucky Enough To Win The Pulitzer Prize For History. I Had To Give A Talk Right After That To Some Young People. The Most Important Thing To Tell Them, I Think, Is That You Can't Ever Know That It's Going To Turn Out That Way.
Thinking
Winning
People
I'd Like To Think That What My Style Of Writing Is, Is An Attempt Not So Much To Judge The Characters That I'm Writing About, To Expose Them, To Label Them, To Stereotype Them, But Instead To Make Them Come Alive For The Reader With All Their Strengths And Their Flaws Intact.
Writing
Character
Thinking
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.
Writing
Technology
Errors
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.
People
Giving
Leader
If You Interview Five People About The Same Incident, And You See Five Different Points Of View, It Makes You Know What Makes History So Complicated. Something Doesn't Just Occur. It's Not Like A Scientific Event. It's A Human Event. So The Dimensions Of It Will Be Seen Differently By Different People.
Views
People
Dimensions
What The American Dream Means To Me Is The Fact That - What Founded This Country - When I Think About Those Posters That Were Put Up In Europe, Which Said, "come To America And You'll Have Golden Sidewalks. The Land Will Be Yours." There Was Something So Inspirational About The Fact That These Immigrants From All Over The World Felt That Here Was A Place Of Freedom, A Place Of Opportunity.
Country
Dream
Mean
(from John Hay's Diary) “the President Never Appeared To Better Advantage In The World,” Hay Proudly Noted In His Diary. “though He Knows How Immense Is The Danger To Himself From The Unreasoning Anger Of That Committee, He Never Cringed To Them For An Instant. He Stood Where He Thought He Was Right And Crushed Them With His Candid Logic.
President
Diaries
Hay
What Interested Me Most About The Kennedys Was The Family Situation. Somehow, They Had Created This Family That Lasted Over Time, They Had A Sense Of Connection To One Another. Especially Now, When People Are Spread All Over The Country And They Don't See Grandparents And Parents, This Family Bonded Together.
Country
People
Grandparent
Go Ahead, And Fear Not. You Will Have A Full Library At Your Service.
Library
Fear Not
Years Of Concentration Solely On Work And Individual Success Meant That In His Retirement [lyndon Johnson] Could Find No Solace In Family, In Recreation, In Sports Or In Hobbies. It Was Almost As If The Hole In His Heart Was So Large That Even The Love Of A Family, Without Work, Could Not Fill It.
Sports
Retirement
Motivation
What I Think I've Learned Is That You're Never Going To Get It All Right, And You Can't Obsess About Having A Fact Wrong Or A Date Wrong Or Something Like That, As Long As You Tried As Best You Could. If You've Done The Kind Of Research That You're Sure Is Pretty Good, Then You Just Have To Have Confidence In It, So That Nothing Is Perfect In Life. I Think That Is What The Criticism Has Helped Me To Understand.
Thinking
Long
Perfect
Better To Have Your Enemies Inside Your Tent Pissing Out, Then To Have Them Outside Your Tent Pissing In.
Enemy
Tents
People Will Love Him (theodore Roosevelt) For The Enemies He Has Made.
People
Enemy
Made
Politicians Generally Form Alliances And Not Friendships. Individuals And Institutions Achieve Their Ends Through Continual Barter. But Deals Are Not Bonds. Indeed, Intense Emotional Involvement With Anything - With Issues, Ideology, A Woman, Even A Family - Can Be A Handicap, Not Only Consuming Valuable Time, But More Importantly, Reducing Flexibility And The Capacity For Detached Calculation Needed To Take Maximum Advantage Of Continually Changing Circumstances.
Emotional
Issues
Alliances
When I Do Research, I Have Done - 90 Percent Of My Time Is The Research, The Other Ten Percent Is The Writing. So I Don't Have To Face A Blank Piece Of Paper. I Can Look At This As A Quote That I Have From Somewhere.
Writing
Faces
Looks
Sometimes People Will Find Things That Are Wrong. Sometimes They Will Even Find An Approach That You Took Wrong. If You Think You Took The Right Approach, Then You Just Absorb The Criticism, But You Don't Change Your Mind.
Thinking
People
Mind
I Liked The Thought That The Book I Was Now Holding Had Been Held By Dozens Of Others.
Book
Dozen
I Think The Most Important Thing I Wanted To Say At Various Times To Franklin And Eleanor Roosevelt Was That It Seemed So Sad To Me That - I Really Believe They Loved Each Other And Had A Great Deal Of Affection - But Because Of That Early Hurt In Their Marriage, There Was A Certain Kind Of Distance From Then On, Until Their Deaths Actually. So At Times, I Just Wanted To Push Them Together And Say, "come On, You Guys! I Know You Love Each Other. This Is Crazy!"
Hurt
Distance
Crazy
Good Leadership Requires You To Surround Yourself With People Of Diverse Perspectives Who Can Disagree With You Without Fear Of Retaliation.
Inspirational
Leadership
People
I Think Some People Who Go Into Public Life, If They Go In Needing The Applause Of Thousands, They're Never Going To Work Out Successfully In The End, Because They Don't Know Who They Are Apart From The Crowds.
Thinking
People
Work Out
When I Look At What A Writer Owes To The Reader, It's Critical To Know That Everything You're Writing About Is Not Made Up In Your Head. I Feel That Unless You Can Document And Be Certain About What It Is That You're Writing About, The Reader Is Going To Lose Faith In Your Own Integrity.
Integrity
Writing
Looks
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.
Believe
Thinking
Play
The Value That I Found In Interviewing Was For An Educational Experience, Just To Know That History Itself Is Subjective, That You Can't Say, "it Happened." Do The Best You Can With What You Think Happened, But A Lot Of Other People Are Going To See It Happening Differently.
Educational
Thinking
People
You Can Be Enormously Effective For A Period Of Time, Because It's Almost Like There's An Engine In You That Needs To Keep Going, And You Have A Greater Drive Than Other People - Who May Be More Happy And Balanced In Life - Because You Have To Keep Going Out And Proving Yourself Over And Over Again.
People
Needs
Going Out
I've Been To The White House A Number Of Times.
White
Numbers
House
He (william Howard Taft) Had Little Patience With The Unconscious Arrogance Of Conscious Wealth And Financial Success.
Arrogance
Taft
Littles
There Is A Sense Of Feeling Larger Than Your Own Life When You're In Some Common Mission Together. You Have To Hope It's Not Going To Take A War To Bring That Back To America Again. I Think Another Time When It Seemed To Be Here Was In The Early 1960s.
War
Thinking
America
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.
Pain
Sadness
Profound
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.
Errors
Mountain
Doe
Though [abraham Lincoln] Never Would Travel To Europe, He Went With Shakespeare's Kings To Merry England; He Went With Lord Byron Poetry To Spain And Portugal. Literature Allowed Him To Transcend His Surroundings.
Kings
Europe
Spain
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.
Gun
Thinking
Parent
What I Learned, More Than Anything, Was That You Can't Have It All Balanced Perfectly At Any One Time. When I Was Young, It Was Much More Balanced Toward Work. When I Had My Children, It Was Much More Balanced Toward Love And Family, And I Didn't Get A Lot Of Work Done. So You Can't Ask Of It To Be Perfectly Balanced At Any Time, But Your Hope Is, Before You Die, You've Somehow Had Each Of Those Spheres Come To Life. That's Probably More Important Than Success In Any One Of Those Spheres Alone.
Children
Important
Spheres
Lyndon Johnson Is Still The Most Formidable, Fascinating, Frustrating, Irritating Individual I Think I've Ever Known In My Entire Life. He Was Huge, A Huge Character, Not Only Standing Six Feet Four, But When You Talked To Him, He Violated The Normal Human Space Between People. He Was A Great Storyteller. The Problem Was That Half His Stories, I Discovered, Weren't True.
Character
Thinking
Space
I Think If I Were Reading To A Grandchild, I Might Read Tolstoy's War And Peace. They Would Learn About Russia, They Would Learn About History, They Would Learn About Human Nature. They Would Learn About, "can The Individual Make A Difference Or Is It Great Forces?" Tolstoy Is Always Battling With Those Large Issues. Mostly, A Whole World Would Come Alive For Them Through That Book.
War
Reading
Book
Once A President Gets To The White House, The Only Audience That Is Left That Really Matters Is History.
White
House
President
I Think Confidence Comes From Doing Something Well, Working At It Hard, And You Build It Up. It's Not Something You're Born With. You Have To Build The Confidence As You Go Along.
Thinking
Born
Wells
I Think, As A President, You Have To Want Respect. You Can't Look For Love From The American People. You Have To Just Do What You Think Is Right. Some People Will Hate You, But Others, In The Long Run, Will Respect You For What You've Done.
Running
Hate
Thinking
A Lot Of Times When People Are On Campaigns, It Can Be Like A Movie Set.
People
Campaigns
Movie Sets
When I Look At Franklin Roosevelt's Leadership, I Think The Most Important Quality He Had During The Depression And The War Was This Absolute Confidence In Himself, In His Country, Really In The American People. He Was Able To Exude That Confidence And Almost Project It.
Country
War
Thinking
As A Consequence [of A Closed Economic Circle], In 1912 There Was Not A Single Irishman Who Sat On A Single Board Of A Major Boston Bank.
Boston
Circles
Boards
That Is What Leadership Is All About: Staking Your Ground Ahead Of Where Opinion Is And Convincing People, Not Simply Following The Popular Opinion Of The Moment.
Leadership
People
Opinion
The White House Is Such An Extraordinary, Simple, Beautiful Place. It's An Extraordinary Piece Of Our History, Because It Is The One Thing That Binds Our Country Together. We Don't Have A King Obviously, But We Have This President, And The Fact That Almost All Of Them Have Lived In The Same Place, And So Much History Took Place In Those Rooms. You Can't Help But Feel Awe-inspired By Being There.
Beautiful
Country
Kings
As Much Research As You Think You're Doing, You're Going To Mess Up, Without A Question.
Thinking
Doing You
Research
It Took Me Five Years On Lyndon Johnson, Ten Years On The Kennedys, Six Years On The Roosevelts. Inevitably, You Get Shaped By The People That You're Thinking About During That Period Of Time.
Thinking
Years
People
Perhaps No American Family-with The Possible Exception Of The Adams Family-has Had A More Vivid And Powerful Impact On The Life Of Their Times. But The Kennedy Tale-the Spiral Compound Of Glory, Achievement, Degradation And Almost Mythical Tragedy-exerts A Fascination Upon Us That Goes Beyond Their Public Achievements.
Family
Powerful
Impact
Excitement About Things Became A Habit, A Part Of My Personality, And The Expectation That I Should Enjoy New Experiences Often Engendered The Enjoyment Itself.
New Experiences
Expectations
Personality
People Tease Me About Knowing Somehow That Obama Would Put Clinton Into The Cabinet, And Everybody Would Talk About A Team Of Rivals.
Team
Knowing
People
I Think With Lyndon Johnson, The Most Important Thing I Learned Was That He Never Had The Sense Of Security That Comes From Inside. It Always Depended On Other People Making Him Feel Good About Himself, Which Meant That He Was Always Beholden, Continually Needing To Succeed. He Could Never Stop. There Was Such A Restlessness In Him.
Thinking
People
Feel Good
Even Though Lyndon Johnson's Presidency Was In Many Ways Scarred Forever By The War In Vietnam, And Destroyed In A Lot Of Ways, He - As A Character - Was Even Larger Than His Presidency. Being Able To Get To Know Him Well, That Firsthand Relationship With This Large Character, I Think Is What Drew Me To Writing Books About Presidents.
War
Book
Writing
They All Start Competing Against Lincoln As The Greatest President. And The [library] Building Becomes The Symbol, The Memorial To That Dream.
Dream
Memorial
President
The Turn Of The Century Was The Age Of The Banker, So Much So That The Leading Bankers Of The Day Had Become Legendary Figures In The Public Imagination-vast, Overshadowing Behemoths Whose Colossal Power Seemed To Reach Everywhere.
Imagination
Age
Bankers
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. We Are Still Too Near To His Greatness,' (leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) Concluded, 'but After A Few Centuries More Our Posterity Will Find Him Considerably Bigger Than We Do. His Genius Is Still Too Strong And Powerful For The Common Understanding, Just As The Sun Is Too Hot When Its Light Beams Directly On Us.' (748)
Country
Strong
Powerful
My Books Are Written With A Strong Chronological Spine.
Strong
Book
Spine
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.
Men
Essentials
Aspect
I Shall Always Be Grateful For This Curious Love Of History, Allowing Me To Spend A Lifetime Looking Back Into The Past, Allowing Me To Learn From These Large Figures About The Struggle For Meaning For Life.
Struggle
Grateful
Past
I've Chosen To Be A Commentator And An Analyzer Of Politics, Rather Than An Actual Doer Of It. I Think It Could Have Gone The Other Way, But I'm Not Sorry That It Didn't, Because This Made It Easier To Be Home With My Kids And To Spend Time With Them. Writing You Can Do Right In Your House. You Don't Have To Go Anywhere.
Sorry
Kids
Home
I Think The Most Important Advice Is, A Person Doesn't Have To Find Out Right Away. It's Not Like Their First Attempt At Finding A Profession Is The Only One They're Going To Find. I Might Well Have Gone Down Other Paths, And It Still Might Have Been Okay. But If You Find Something That You Love, And If It Keeps Deepening With Each New Experience, Then Just Stay With It.
Thinking
New Experiences
Advice
I Am A Historian. With The Exception Of Being A Wife And Mother, It Is Who I Am. And There Is Nothing I Take More Seriously.
Mother
Who I Am
Wife
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.
Country
President
Together
One Of The Important Qualities That I Think Is Often Overlooked Is Just Energy. It's Vitality, And Sort Of A Life Force That Some People Have And Others Don't. Probably That Is Connected To A Love Of Whatever It Is That They're Doing. Another Quality That I Think Is Central Is Confidence. Again, Some People Are More Blessed With That Than Others.
Blessed
Thinking
People
All Through My Childhood, My Father Kept From Me The Knowledge That The Daily Papers Printed Daily Box Scores, Allowing Me To Believe That Without My Personal Renderings Of All Those Games He Missed While He Was At Work, He Would Be Unable To Follow Our Team In The Only Proper Way A Team Should Be Followed, Day By Day, Inning By Inning. In Other Words, Without Me, His Love For Baseball Would Be Forever Incomplete.
Baseball
Father
Team
If Your Ambition Comes At The Price Of An Unbalanced Life, That There's Nothing Else That Gives You Comfort But Success, It's Not Worth It.
Ambition
Giving
Comfort
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.
Book
Two
Want
My Recurring Nightmare Is That Someday I Will Be Faced With A Panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy And Lyndon Johnson All Of Whom Will Be Telling Me Everything I Got Wrong About Them. I Know That Johnson's Out There Saying, 'why Is It That What You Wrote About The Kennedys Is Twice As Long As The Book You Wrote About Me?
Book
Long
Nightmare
There Are 20,000 Million Books I Could Have To Read, But I Can Pick The Ones And Know That I'm Learning Something That I Didn't Know Before. That's The Glory Of Writing. It's Not Even So Much The Writing, It's What You Learn - Especially History - Because So Much Of It Is Research.
Book
Writing
Research
I Think That's Still What The American Dream Means: That With Perseverance, With Hard Work, You Can Become Something, That The Classes Won't Prevent You From Becoming, That There's A Movement Up That Ladder With Hard Work.
Dream
Perseverance
Hard Work
I Still Think About That One Jamiroquai Video A Lot.
Thinking
Video
Stills
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.
War
Support
Progress
While Its [harvard's] Undergraduate Life Was Still Controlled [in 1908-1912] By A Select Group Of Rich And Fashionable Families Whose Sons Merely Arrived When They Were Due To Fill The Places That Had Been Waiting For Them From The Day They Were Born, It Was, At The Same Time, Opening Its Doors To A More Cosmopolitan Student Population And Beginning To Take The First Tentative Steps Toward Mitigating The Evils Of A Pyramidal Social System That Concentrated All Its Social Honors Upon The Rich And The Wellborn.
Son
Doors
Class
An Adult Friend Of Lincoln's: "life Was To Him A School.
School
Adults
Trending Author
Ann Druyan
Freddy Adu
John Grierson
Harry Browne
Jenna Elfman
Katherine Boo
Category
Information