Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements - necessary improvements - in the republican experiment they began. "

Related Quotes:

" The American political system is based on the president taking the initiative and Congress responding. With President Trump, it's been the opposite. "

H. W. Brands

System

Congress

Political

" The president is the one person who potentially could be the unifying figure in the country. And if the president or a presidential candidate basically writes off 40 states, then how in the world do the people in those 40 states feel like they have a stake in that person or that election? "

" People who teach American history survey classes have a lot of ground to cover and tend to focus on landmarks. You get through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and you have to get to the beginning of the 20th century fast. It's pretty easy to go lightly on the Gilded Age. "

" America can change its presidents, but the world doesn't change. "

" It wasn't the smiling Trump that people elected. It was the frowning, glowering, angry Donald Trump that people elected. "

" Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it. "

" President Obama ran a campaign in 2008 that was entirely expected from a non-incumbent. You promise, and you imply that if you elect me, everything good is going to happen. "

H. W. Brands

Happen

Everything

" The Tea Party loves Reagan because he said exactly what they want to hear. "

" The historic dearth of labor was perhaps the central feature of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "

" Most presidents have not considered 100 days a significant milepost. "

" In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process. "

" I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will. "

" Previous candidates who get elected are almost always sobered by the office and the responsibility they take on. Donald Trump shows no evidence of that. He's the same Trump that he was when he was host of his reality TV show. He's the same Trump that he was when he was a candidate. "

" By the early 1960s, there was a moral consensus on what needed to be done on civil rights. "

" I never admit to wishing I'd written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of 'The Guns of August,' I wouldn't complain. "

" With my students, I always have to sell my subject because I know when you're 19, 20 years old, you've got other things on your mind besides American history. What I have to do is make this as compelling as possible. "

" Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic... side. "

" In the business arena, the standard rules of morality don't apply. What we're really looking for is efficiency. It doesn't do anyone any good to be nice to the weak. In a certain sense, competition is inefficient. "

" Presidents are evaluated not by what they did by the stroke of their own pen; it's what they persuade Congress to do. "

" Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people. "

" In modern times, the American military has become more bureaucratised. "

H. W. Brands

Modern

American

" If - heaven forbid - a shooter did come into my class, I wouldn't want to have to worry about getting caught in a crossfire. "

" Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it's also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it's the similarities or differences that matter more. "

" Love makes the most careful man wreckless. "

" Reagan conspired in the underestimation of his own ability. "

" I certainly don't think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class. "

" The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before. "

" When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together? "

" I'm more inclined to say the presidency has changed Trump rather than Trump changed the presidency. He has moderated or reversed himself on most of the positions he took as a candidate. Reality has set in, as it does with every new president. "

H. W. Brands

New

President

" The Catalonian movement is quite serious; I don't think it's simply symbolic. I think that they believe that Catalonia can be more successful on its own than as part of Spain. "