Quote

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

Jon Meacham

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jon Meacham
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 20
Biographer
Editor
Editor-In-Chief
Historian
Journalist
Chattanooga
Tennessee
Jon Ellis Meacham
Greatest
Aspiration
Jefferson
Like
Leaders
Mechanics
Master
Articulate
National
Aspirations
Neither
Mechanic
Masters
Dogma
Depart
Influence
Dictator
Dictators
Leader
Dreamer
Dreamers

More quotes by Jon Meacham

Image
I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day.
Jon Meacham
Image
Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.
Jon Meacham
Image
One wonders whether the Obama re-election campaign may be on the right track as it seeks to apply the you-break-it-you-own-it rule to Bush and the American economy. Hardly a day goes by without President Obama or his surrogates arguing that it takes longer than four years to recover from an economic crisis so long in the making.
Jon Meacham
Image
A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.
Jon Meacham
Image
One of the earliest resurrection scenes in the Bible is that of Thomas demanding evidence - he wanted to see, to touch, to prove. Those who question and probe and debate are heirs of the apostles just as much as the most fervent of believers.
Jon Meacham
Image
One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.
Jon Meacham
Image
Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.
Jon Meacham
Image
I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.
Jon Meacham
Image
As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom - not least freedom of conscience.
Jon Meacham
Image
In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all.
Jon Meacham
Image
As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.
Jon Meacham
Image
The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.
Jon Meacham
Image
The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.
Jon Meacham
Image
I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.
Jon Meacham
Image
America has long raised political and cultural cognitive dissonance to an art form. We are capable of living with enormous inequality and injustice while convincing ourselves that we are in fact moving toward what Churchill called the broad, sun-lit uplands.
Jon Meacham
Image
Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
Image
Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief - a critical test for many Americans.
Jon Meacham
Image
Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.
Jon Meacham
Image
In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.
Jon Meacham
Image
The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood, Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts, the will to power at the price of the lives of others.
Jon Meacham