Best 70 quotes of H. W. Brands on MyQuotes

Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else.

Accustomed to motion, he was forced to be still.

A live-in domestic worker: "You are never sure that your soul is your own except when you are out of the house.

America's mission is to join the most ancient civilizations with the most modern. John Augustus Roeblin

Amid the war the capitalists were asserting national necessity.

Andrew Carnegie was an inventor only in the sense that he adopted and adapted the discoveries of others.

A young mark twain on the make: "I can't turn in inkstand into Aladdin's lamp.

Both sides had more confidence in their opponents' weaknesses than their own strength.

Bushes may not be eloquent explaining emotion, but George HW Bush's mother knew enough to be in position with her children were ready to talk. She waited up not just to ensure safety but to make the most of the moment of excited emotions. The next morning, they would congeal into polite, one-word answers.

Chinese immigrant: "Americans make a mere practice of loving justice.

CONSERVATIVES IN MODERN America face a chronic problem in running for office. Often believing government to be the enemy, they have to explain to themselves and others why they want to join that enemy.

Diplomacy was a long game.

Employment was better than idleness for men, because it kept the enemy guessing.

Eugene Debs entered jail a moderate Unionist and emerged a Socialist.

Even when he played, he made a business of it.

Fatigue could be the dealmaker's friend.

Gen. Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.

Gold, or at least the prospect of it, saved him, then killed him.

Grant made the perfect candidate, a war hero with indistinct views on most political issues.

He cultivated ideological fuzziness.

He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view.

He forced himself into good spirits.

He had always had a gift for conjuring images in his mind's eye. It was one of the secrets of his military success.

He has not shown the special interest in reading that we should like to see but he likes shop work. George H. W. Bush's parents on his Andover application

He (the immigrant father) would walk by proxy in the Elysian fields of liberal learning.

He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.

He was a generous but subtly demanding boss.

He was a product of a culture where it was generally counterproductive to hold grudges.

He was not a warm person, but he seemed to be, which in politics was more important.

He was trying to find his footing in a world both familiar and foreign

His notes to the outside world offered a window on an active, sympathetic, eclectic mind.

His was a quiet but persistent charisma.

I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.

I believe the road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master IN THAT LINE. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one's resources. Andrew Carnegie

I can see that spark coming back when he talks about the future.

If a separation of the states ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate and to sacrifice the interest of another.

Indeed, the key to all diplomacy was knowing when they were serious about their threats and when they were posturing. Nations were like individuals, requiring cultivation and the paying of respect.

In imperial relationships, getting out proves much more complicated than getting in.

In the immediate aftermath of the great Chicago fire, a business proprietor erected a shack in front of his burned-out business. On a sign, he placed his name and the tagline that everything was gone but wife, children, and energy.

It is more important to me that my students come out of my class believing 'This story is interesting and I might want to know more about it', than to fill them up with information. If I can remind them or convince them that history is interesting then I feel I have succeeded, because unlike chemistry or physics, history is a subject that anyone can teach themselves, if they are interested."[

It may be that the voice of the people is the voice of God 51 times out of 100. But the remaining 49 times, it is the voice of the devil, or worse, the voice of a fool. Theodore Roosevelt

It's philanthropy, but it's good politics, too. Mighty good politics. The poor are some of the most grateful people in the world. George Washington Plunkett.

Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I.

Once information slipped the bonds of gravity and friction, it tended to gather where it was most valuable.

One of George H. W. Bush's early teachers at Andover wrote, "At the moment he is intellectually immature for his powers of reasoning are not entirely developed.

One with God is always a majority. But many have been burned at the stake while the boats were being counted. Thomas Reed

Proving himself to himself was no small matter.

Publicity is the engine of politics.

Reagan is described as "delivering Barry Goldwater's doctrine with John F. Kennedy's technique.

Reporter Jacob Riis made it his mission to expose the horrors of poverty in New York. New to working with a camera, his flash actually set the walls of One apartment inhabited by five blind people on fire.