Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
As much research as you think you're doing, you're going to mess up, without a question.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: January 4
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
Brooklyn
New York
Thinking
Mess
Research
Question
Without
Going
Much
Think
More quotes by 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
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
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
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
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
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
When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity.
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
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
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
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
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
(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
A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare's kings to Merry England he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
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
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
