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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

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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: January 4
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
Brooklyn
New York
Else
Unbalanced
Nothing
Price
Giving
Ambition
Life
Comfort
Worth
Gives
Success
Comes

More quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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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
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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
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Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Even though Lyndon Johnson's presidency was in many ways scarred forever by the war in Vietnam, and destroyed in a lot of ways, he - as a character - was even larger than his presidency. Being able to get to know him well, that firsthand relationship with this large character, I think is what drew me to writing books about presidents.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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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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Perhaps no American family-with the possible exception of the Adams family-has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times. But the Kennedy tale-the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy-exerts a fascination upon us that goes beyond their public achievements.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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My books are written with a strong chronological spine.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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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
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I'd like to think that what my style of writing is, is an attempt not so much to judge the characters that I'm writing about, to expose them, to label them, to stereotype them, but instead to make them come alive for the reader with all their strengths and their flaws intact.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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(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
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I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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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
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I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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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
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As a consequence [of a closed economic circle], in 1912 there was not a single Irishman who sat on a single board of a major Boston bank.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.
Doris Kearns Goodwin