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" Reagan's enduring value as a conservative icon stems from his resolute preaching of the conservative gospel, in words that still warm the hearts of the most zealous conservatives. Yet Reagan's value as a conservative model must begin with recognition of his flexibility in the pursuit of his conservative goals. "

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" The Founders were anything but demigods to themselves and their contemporaries, who recognized full well that the experiment in self-government had only begun. "

H. W. Brands

Anything

Well

Who

" Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office. "

" The Republican Party has moved substantially to the right of where Reagan was. "

" Theodore Roosevelt, when he was out of office, he would do things to draw attention. But when you are president, you don't need to shout. When you are in office, you are the story. "

" If it's a good story, it's a good story, and it draws readers in. "

" Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse. "

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

" Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter. "

" Booker Washington was branded an accommodationist by many of the people who criticized him. "

" George W. Bush has shown himself to be a decent guy, not exploiting his former office to make top dollars giving speeches. "

" The Reagan Revolution has had no second act. "

" 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. "

" Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz. "

" Presidents have to decide what their popularity is for. Lyndon Johnson probably understood best that political popularity is a wasting asset. You had to use it when you had it. "

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

" People are interested in people. They buy biographies; they don't buy studies of presidencies. "

" In the early 19th to the early 20th century, people had a lot of things wrong with them. Doctors didn't know how to fix them, and so they lived with them. "

" I read in all forms: paper, computer, phone, audio. "

" I'm often asked, 'Why didn't Benjamin Franklin ever become president?' My short, easy answer is: He died. "

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

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

" I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience. "

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

H. W. Brands

Modern

American

" There is a certain kind of sobering, civilizing effect that being president imposes on people. There is a certain kind of dignity with which you comport yourself. As an observer of the presidency, I have to wonder if Trump would follow that pattern. "

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

" I'm trying to tell the story of the evolution of America. Each biography is a life in time, and I can see there's a particular task for each generation that I write about. "

" A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war. "

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

" The more of my readers I encounter who say, often apologetically, that they are actually listeners, the more I write for the ear rather than the eye. Small things like identifying speakers in dialogue rather than relying on paragraphing to mark the shifts. "

" Reagan is the subject of ongoing political debate, and a lot of liberals don't want to take Reagan any more seriously than they did when he was president. I understand why they don't, but they should. "