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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.

-Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Many Kids Think Unless

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

Good Leadership Requires You To Surround Yourself With People Of Diverse Perspectives Who Can Disagree With You Without Fear Of Retaliation.

People Will Love Him (theodore Roosevelt) For The Enemies He Has Made.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Better To Have Your Enemies Inside Your Tent Pissing Out, Then To Have Them Outside Your Tent Pissing In.

I Liked The Thought That The Book I Was Now Holding Had Been Held By Dozens Of Others.

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.

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.

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

Go Ahead, And Fear Not. You Will Have A Full Library At Your Service.

He (william Howard Taft) Had Little Patience With The Unconscious Arrogance Of Conscious Wealth And Financial Success.

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.

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.

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.

As Much Research As You Think You're Doing, You're Going To Mess Up, Without A Question.

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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.

New Experiences

The Past Is Not Simply The Past, But A Prism Through Which The Subject Filters His Own Changing Self-image.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Once A President Gets To The White House, The Only Audience That Is Left That Really Matters Is History.

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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.

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.

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.

People Tease Me About Knowing Somehow That Obama Would Put Clinton Into The Cabinet, And Everybody Would Talk About A Team Of Rivals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They All Start Competing Against Lincoln As The Greatest President. And The [library] Building Becomes The Symbol, The Memorial To That Dream.

(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.

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.

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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.

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.

I've Been To The White House A Number Of Times.

My Books Are Written With A Strong Chronological Spine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever It Is That You Do, If You Have That Passion And Desire For It, That's The Most Important Thing.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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