Top 200 Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Lincoln was “the most truly progressive man of the age, because he always moves in conjunction with propitious circumstances, not waiting to be dragged by the force of events or wasting strength in premature struggles with them.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

52. “The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

53. “Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists tell us, consists of the ability to adapt to the inevitable stresses and misfortunes of life. It does not mean freedom from anxiety and depression, but only the ability to cope with these afflictions in a healthy way. “An outstanding feature of successful adaptation,” writes George Vaillant, “is that it leaves the way open for future growth.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

54. “Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating “all the elements of the Republican party – including the impracticable, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

55. “From his early twenties, Lyndon Johnson had operated upon the premise that if “he could get up earlier and meet more people and stay up later than anybody else,” victory would be his.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

56. “Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheet a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

57. “Lincoln was as calm and unruffled as the summer sea in moments of the gravest peril;.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

58. “Attempting to circumvent this declaration, Hunter recalled that Charles I of England had entered repeatedly into arrangements with his adversaries despite ongoing hostilities. “I do not profess to be posted in history,” Lincoln answered. “On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head in the end.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

59. “I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

60. “With public sentiment, nothing can fail,” Abraham Lincoln said, “without it nothing can succeed.” Such a leader is inseparably linked to the people. Such leadership is a mirror in which the people see their collective reflection.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

61. “Johnson insisted, “I don’t want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven’t done nearly enough. I’m kind of ashamed of myself that I had six years and couldn’t do more than I did.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

62. “Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists tell us, consists of the ability to adapt to the inevitable stresses and misfortunes of life. It does not mean freedom from anxiety and depression, but only the ability to cope with these afflictions in a healthy way.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

63. “Moreover, Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress. Indeed, when he is compared with his colleagues, it is clear that he possessed the most even-tempered disposition of them all.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

64. “Lincoln understood that the greatest challenge for a leader in a democratic society is to educate public opinion.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

65. “People tease me about knowing somehow that Obama would put Clinton into the cabinet, and everybody would talk about a team of rivals.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

66. “Frances, who also was feeling distant from her husband. Though still deeply in love after ten years of marriage, Frances worried that her husband’s passion for politics and worldly achievement surpassed his love for his family. She mourned “losing my influence over a heart I once thought so entirely my own,” increasingly apprehensive that she and her husband were “differently constituted.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

67. “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.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

68. “In this first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood “ready to renounce them.” With this commitment, Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life – a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

69. “America was a special country, because, despite the diversity of our racial, religious, and ethnic origins, we were all one nation, one people with a shared set of values and a common culture.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

71. “The media and pundits of the day instructed women that their only true fulfillment could be found as wives and mothers, that sexist discrimination was actually good for them, that the denial of opportunity was, in reality, the manifestation of the highest possible goals of womanhood.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

72. “She could be affectionate, generous, and optimistic one day; vengeful, depressed, and irritable the next. In the colloquial language of her friends, she was “either in the garret or cellar.” In either mood, she needed attention, something the self-contained Lincoln was not always able to provide.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

73. “Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued in another context many years later, the “grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

74. “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.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

75. “My reading was always a kind of living,” he explained later, “a longing to know some man or men stronger, braver, wiser, wittier, more amusing, or more desperately wicked, than I was, whom I could come to know well and sometimes be friends with.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

76. “I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

77. “On a hot summer night in July 1836, an organized mob broke into the shop where the abolitionist weekly was printed, dismantled the press, and tore up the edition that was about to be circulated.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

78. “They were stealin’ votes in east Texas,” Johnson supporter and Austin mayor Tom Miller recalled, “we were stealin’ votes in south Texas, only Jesus Christ could say who actually won it.” But Jesus wasn’t counting, and, by an eighty-seven-vote margin, “Landslide Lyndon” attained the Senate seat he had coveted for so long.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

79. “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.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

80. “Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power?”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

81. “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.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

82. “It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, “he observed, “that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations of the whole earth, to carry successfully through the experiment... That men are capable of self-government.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

83. “Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, “armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

84. “Whereas Taft discouraged the young Yale student from extracurricular reading, fearful it would detract from required courses, Roosevelt read widely yet managed to stand near the top of his class. The breath of his numerous interests allowed him to draw on knowledge across various disciplines, from zoology in philosophy and religion, from poetry and drama to history and politics.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

85. “Until we address unequal history, we cannot overcome unequal opportunity.” Until blacks “stand on level and equal ground,” we cannot rest. It must be our goal “to assure that all Americans play by the same rules and all Americans play against the same odds.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

86. “There is no one left,” McClure exhorted his readers as he cast about for a remedy to America’s woes at the turn of the twentieth century, “none but all of us.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

87. “Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments,” he wrote, “but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

88. “Before any outcome was made public, the radicals had worked themselves into “a fury of rage,” certain that the president “was about to give up the political fruits which had been already gathered.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

89. “Shortly before she left for New York, she received an unwelcome present from South Carolina – a painting depicting Lincoln “with a rope around his neck, his feet chained and his body adorned with tar and feathers.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

90. “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.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

91. “Still, slander against the president and first lady continued to fill the columns of opposition papers.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

92. “It is seldom that persons who enjoy intervals of public life are happy in their periods of seclusion.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

93. “There it was again: the entrance up the darkened ramp disclosing an expanse of amazing green, the fervent crowd contained in a stadium scaled to human dimensions, the players so close it almost seemed that you could touch them, the eccentric features of an old ballpark constructed to fit the contours of the allotted space. I.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

94. “But the same “personal charm” that had propelled Taft to the presidency ultimately proved “dangerous” to him, Baker concluded. For far too long, his amiable nature had kept him from the rough-and-tumble of politics, from the need to fight for himself and his convictions. Had he come into the White House.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

95. “When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: “The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

96. “A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

97. “Although the guilty verdict surprised few, the size of the resulting fine stunned the company and the country. For each of the 1,462 carloads of oil that had enjoyed an illegal rebate, Landis levied the highest possible fine, $20,000, generating a spectacular cumulative total of $29,240,000. Commenting on the hefty charge, Mark Twain drolly remarked that the sum evoked the bride’s proverbial astonishment on the morning after her wedding: “I expected it but didn’t suppose it would be so big.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

98. “No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

99. “Refuse to let past resentments fester; transcend personal vendettas.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin

100. “Hearst’s papers and magazines” were his intended target and promised his speech would clarify that he abhorred “the whitewash brush quite as much as of mud slinging.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin