Top 200 Jon Meacham Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord.”

— Jon Meacham

52. “The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.”

— Jon Meacham

53. “I am writing now not because past American presidents have always risen to the occasion but because the incumbent American president so rarely does.”

— Jon Meacham

54. “Arguing for black enfranchisement in 1867, Frederick Douglass said: “If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations.”

— Jon Meacham

55. “Americans unhappy with the reflexively polarized politics of the first decades of the twenty-first century will find the presidency of George H. W. Bush refreshing, even quaint. He embraced compromise as a necessary element of public life, engaged his political foes in the passage of important legislation, and was willing to break with the base of his own party in order to do what he thought was right, whatever the price. Quaint, yes: But it happened, in America, only a quarter of a century ago.”

— Jon Meacham

56. “Jackson was a transformative president in part because he had a transcendent personality; other presidents who followed him were not transformative, and served unremarkably.”

— Jon Meacham

57. “You can make friends by being honest, and you can keep them by being steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will in the long run expect as much from you as they give to you.”

— Jon Meacham

58. “Madison struck in 1785, writing a “Memorial and Remonstrance” on the subject of state support for churches. When religious and civil power were intertwined, Madison said, “What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

— Jon Meacham

59. “I do not believe ‘Newsweek’ is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them, and I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.”

— Jon Meacham

60. “My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.”

— Jon Meacham

61. “An important thing to remember about the press is there is no ideological bias.”

— Jon Meacham

62. “In our finest hours... the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists; to look out rather than to turn inward; to accept rather than to reject. In so doing, America has grown ever stronger, confident that the choice of light over dark is the means by which we pursue progress.”

— Jon Meacham

63. “As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it in a phrase drawn from the abolitionist Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Bends, not swerves – but what we can miss in this cold-eyed understanding of history is that the arc won’t even bend without devoted Americans pressing for the swerve.”

— Jon Meacham

64. “Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.”

— Jon Meacham

65. “I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.”

— Jon Meacham

66. “A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.”

— Jon Meacham

67. “History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?”

— Jon Meacham

68. “A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?”

— Jon Meacham

69. “Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.”

— Jon Meacham

70. “When the nation sees differently, it enhances its capacity to act differently. From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, America has gradually expanded who’s included when the country speaks of “We the People.”

— Jon Meacham

71. “President Obama is now losing to ‘Republican Nominee’ in polls – no name needed.”

— Jon Meacham

72. “Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, ‘Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned?’ The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. ‘Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.”

— Jon Meacham

73. “Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think.”

— Jon Meacham

74. “Americans tend to prefer their presidents on horseback: heroes who dream big and sound trumpets. There is, however, another kind of leader – quieter and less glamorous but no less significant – whose virtues repay our attention. There is greatness in political lives dedicated more to steadiness than to boldness, more to reform than to revolution, more to management of complexity than to the making of mass movements.”

— Jon Meacham

75. “Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.”

— Jon Meacham

76. “All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.”

— Jon Meacham

77. “One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting – not well; I am a terrible shot – quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.”

— Jon Meacham

78. “For Jefferson and his contemporaries – and, thankfully, for most of their successors in positions of ultimate authority – one of the main points of public life was to enable human creativity and ingenuity and possibility, not to constrict it.”

— Jon Meacham

79. “Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment.”

— Jon Meacham

80. “Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.”

— Jon Meacham

81. “It is,” TR said, “a base outrage to oppose a man because of his religion or birthplace, and all good citizens will hold any such effort in abhorrence.”

— Jon Meacham

82. “I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion – and conciliation – and education – and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know – or believe in – or will practice.”

— Jon Meacham

83. “Johnson said: “John Kennedy’s death commands what his life conveyed – that America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into our Nation’s bloodstream.”

— Jon Meacham

84. “One of the earliest resurrection scenes in the Bible is that of Thomas demanding evidence – he wanted to see, to touch, to prove. Those who question and probe and debate are heirs of the apostles just as much as the most fervent of believers.”

— Jon Meacham

85. “The message of Martin Luther King, Jr. – that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin – dwells in the American soul; so does the menace of the Ku Klux Klan. History hangs precariously in the balance between such extremes. Our fate is contingent upon which element – that of hope or that of fear – emerges triumphant.”

— Jon Meacham

86. “Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them – take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.”

— Jon Meacham

87. “John Adams had foreseen how central the president would be in American life. “His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people,” Adams wrote in 1790.”

— Jon Meacham

88. “We live in a center-right country. Now watch me smile oleaginously.”

— Jon Meacham

89. “My mind has been long fixed to bow to the judgment of the world, who will judge me by my acts, and will never take counsel from me as to what that judgment should be.”

— Jon Meacham

90. “I believe after a series of years that no government that has the power to collect taxes and declare war, can be restrained but by a display of sufficient power to break it up,” Pickens said.”

— Jon Meacham

91. “Jefferson sensed that, as with lovers and intimate friends, there can often be no middle ground between engagement and estrangement. In the presence of passion, or of former passions, acquaintance is impossible. It is all or nothing, for once affections have cooled it is very difficult to bring them back to a middling temperature. In such cases human nature tends to rekindle the flames to their old force, or consign them to perpetual chill.”

— Jon Meacham

92. “The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one’s virtues in a vigorous way.”

— Jon Meacham

93. “From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We’ll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.”

— Jon Meacham

94. “While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing – good for our political culture.”

— Jon Meacham

95. “Well,” Bush answered, “I’m worried that sometimes your idealism will get in the way of what I think is sound governance.”

— Jon Meacham

96. “Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.”

— Jon Meacham

97. “Reagan is the Republican FDR, an exemplar of presidential greatness.”

— Jon Meacham

98. “The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing.”

— Jon Meacham

99. “Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.”

— Jon Meacham

100. “Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts.”

— Jon Meacham