Quote

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

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
Life
Least
Nations
Freedom
Unifying
Religion
Crucial
Faith
Specific
Force
Commitment
America
Conscience
Never
Nation

More quotes by 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
Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard.
Jon Meacham
Image
Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.
Jon Meacham
Image
Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.
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
The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.
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
Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
Image
I've been accused of being old before my time more than once. It's true that I've always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents - and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
Jon Meacham
Image
Reagan is the Republican FDR, an exemplar of presidential greatness.
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
Barack Obama is many things among them, he is a tough and even ferocious political warrior.
Jon Meacham
Image
A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.
Jon Meacham
Image
An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure.
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
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
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
Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.
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
We often talk too much & listen too little. The surer route to winning a friend isn't to convince them that you're right, but that you care what they think.
Jon Meacham