"It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, "he observed, "that he realizes the fearful … - Doris Kearns Goodwin

I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.

For better than thirty years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his way as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject

When you have worked with them, when you have lived with them, you do not have to wonder how they feel, because you feel it yourself.