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Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: January 4
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
Brooklyn
New York
White
President
History
House
Left
Matter
Matters
Really
Gets
Audience
More quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
If you interview five people about the same incident, and you see five different points of view, it makes you know what makes history so complicated. Something doesn't just occur. It's not like a scientific event. It's a human event. So the dimensions of it will be seen differently by different people.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
(from John Hay's diary) “The President never appeared to better advantage in the world,” Hay proudly noted in his diary. “Though He knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of that committee, he never cringed to them for an instant. He stood where he thought he was right and crushed them with his candid logic.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
If your ambition comes at the price of an unbalanced life, that there's nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it's not worth it.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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
You can be enormously effective for a period of time, because it's almost like there's an engine in you that needs to keep going, and you have a greater drive than other people - who may be more happy and balanced in life - because you have to keep going out and proving yourself over and over again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
When I do research, I have done - 90 percent of my time is the research, the other ten percent is the writing. So I don't have to face a blank piece of paper. I can look at this as a quote that I have from somewhere.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I've chosen to be a commentator and an analyzer of politics, rather than an actual doer of it. I think it could have gone the other way, but I'm not sorry that it didn't, because this made it easier to be home with my kids and to spend time with them. Writing you can do right in your house. You don't have to go anywhere.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I think, as a president, you have to want respect. You can't look for love from the American people. You have to just do what you think is right. Some people will hate you, but others, in the long run, will respect you for what you've done.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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
I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The value that I found in interviewing was for an educational experience, just to know that history itself is subjective, that you can't say, It happened. Do the best you can with what you think happened, but a lot of other people are going to see it happening differently.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I think confidence comes from doing something well, working at it hard, and you build it up. It's not something you're born with. You have to build the confidence as you go along.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
