Doris kearns goodwin Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Quotes of Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
no one knew better than Lincoln that words have consequences. In a world of tinder, he was determined to hold his rhetorical gifts in abeyance in order to reach across factions and avoid a single spark that could set loose an avoidable conflagration.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
of bed rest. Thee feared that his son was
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
There are points of likeness in the seminal disasters that befell both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt in the early stages of their careers. Both crucibles were precipitated by a combination of intimate, personal crises and public repudiation that seemed to crush their core ambitions. Both swore off politics or at least paid lip service to deserting politics forever. Both suffered severe depressions. Healing change had to come from within while they waited for the historical kaleidoscope to turn.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Team of Rivals: The Political
Testing his image in Hartford, he would refine it further in subsequent speeches. "If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road," Lincoln began, "any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. . . . But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide! . . . The new Territories are the newly made bed to which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not." The snake metaphor acknowledged the constitutional protection of slavery where it legally existed, while harnessing the protective instincts of parents to safeguard future generations from the venomous expansion of slavery. This homely vision of the territories as beds for American children exemplified what James Russell Lowell described as Lincoln's ability to speak "as if the people were listening to their own thinking out loud." When Seward reached for a metaphor to dramatize the same danger, he warned that if slavery were allowed into Kansas, his countrymen would have "introduced the Trojan horse" into the new territory. Even if most of his classically trained fellow senators immediately grasped his intent, the Trojan horse image carried neither the instant accessibility of Lincoln's snake-in-the-bed story nor its memorable originality.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the
The American people," Johnson continued, "are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders-people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive. They will turn their backs on the party that is destructive.… If we go forward as positive Americans and not negative oppositionists I am convinced that the time is not too far distant when the Democratic Party will again be in the majority. The party that can produce a record of service to the people … the party that is the least partisan and the most patriotic … that party will win. A party that is overly partisan, overly quarrelsome and obsessed solely with politics will lose.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the
The American people," Johnson continued, "are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders-people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
Do leaders shape the times or do the times summon their leaders?
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Team of Rivals: The Political
From the time he had first spoken out against the extension of slavery into the territories in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln had insisted that while the spread of slavery must be "fairly headed off," he had no wish "to interfere with slavery" where it already existed. So long as the institution was contained, which Lincoln considered a sacred pledge, it was "in course of ultimate extinction." This position represented perfectly the views of the moderate majority in the Republican Party.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
How had Lincoln been able to lead these inordinately prideful, ambitious, quarrelsome, jealous, supremely gifted men to support a fundamental shift in the purpose of the war? The best answer can be found in what we identify today as Lincoln's emotional intelligence: his empathy, humility, consistency, self-awareness, self-discipline, and generosity of spirit. "So long as I have been here," Lincoln maintained, "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom." In his everyday interactions with the team, there was no room for mean-spirited behavior, for grudges or personal resentments.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
Refuse to let past resentments fester; transcend personal vendettas.
book-quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Leadership: In Turbulent Times
Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.
book-quote