Quote

Liberty is precious. But so is life. It should not be so difficult for men and women of good will and good heart and sound mind to find the right balance between the two.

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
Find
Right
Precious
Heart
Balance
Mind
Liberty
Good
Sound
Men
Difficult
Life
Two
Women

More quotes by Jon Meacham

Image
It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.
Jon Meacham
Image
Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.
Jon Meacham
Image
Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.
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
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
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
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.
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
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
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
I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.
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
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
Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms.
Jon Meacham
Image
Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.
Jon Meacham
Image
The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.
Jon Meacham
Image
Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.
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
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
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