Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by H. W. Brands

Most presidents have not considered 100 days a significant milepost.

When the Constitution was written in 1787, there was this supposition that American politics would be above party. The people who would staff the positions in government would have the interests of the country, or at least their states and congressional districts, at heart, and so they wouldn't form permanent political parties.

America can change its presidents, but the world doesn't change.

He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.

The more of my readers I encounter who say, often apologetically, that they are actually listeners, the more I write for the ear rather than the eye. Small things like identifying speakers in dialogue rather than relying on paragraphing to mark the shifts.

President Trump is doing what he can to act decisively. And if there's one thing most people have in mind in distinguishing the business world from the political world is that the CEO of a business can act decisively.

To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century.

Theodore Roosevelt, when he was out of office, he would do things to draw attention. But when you are president, you don't need to shout. When you are in office, you are the story.

In the early 19th to the early 20th century, people had a lot of things wrong with them. Doctors didn't know how to fix them, and so they lived with them.

If - heaven forbid - a shooter did come into my class, I wouldn't want to have to worry about getting caught in a crossfire.

Our love for the Founders leads us to abandon, and even to betray, the very principles they fought for.

When people think of the oil industry, they think of Rockefeller, much like when people think of the software industry, they think of Bill Gates.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

George W. Bush has shown himself to be a decent guy, not exploiting his former office to make top dollars giving speeches.

The candidate who promises the most has the best chance of winning.

I never admit to wishing I'd written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of 'The Guns of August,' I wouldn't complain.

The historic dearth of labor was perhaps the central feature of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A president can start a war under relatively specious circumstances, and once American soldiers are under fire, Americans will support the soldiers and support the president.

If you put on the military uniform, you're a prima facie hero. Generals are the epitome of that. They're the ones who have been most successful at the soldier's trade.

For Andrew Jackson, politics was very personal. He hated not just the federal debt. He hated debt at all.

Toward the end of the 1964 presidential campaign, Reagan gives a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater. It was like a screen test for a new career.

You might say presidents are drafting the first chapter of their memoirs in these seventh-year State of the Union addresses. They're trying to get the public and the media to think about their presidencies in the way that they would like to have them thought of.

When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?

In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements - necessary improvements - in the republican experiment they began.

I'm often asked, 'Why didn't Benjamin Franklin ever become president?' My short, easy answer is: He died.

The president of the United States from the 1940s until 2017 was considered the leader of the free world - probably the most powerful person in the world - not simply in terms of America's military might but in terms of the moral authority of the president. Donald Trump has largely abdicated that.

Reagan conspired in the underestimation of his own ability.

Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people.

Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse.

If you wanted to, you could write history in Haiku.

I read in all forms: paper, computer, phone, audio.

Even when candidates have degrees from Harvard and Yale, they try to run as the candidate of the common man.

The Catalonian movement is quite serious; I don't think it's simply symbolic. I think that they believe that Catalonia can be more successful on its own than as part of Spain.

The Reagan Revolution has had no second act.

You can always find people, ordinary people, who will support your particular view, so it becomes a politics of personality, especially at the presidential level. People often go for somebody that they like or somebody that they can identify with.

Americans knock themselves out, especially since 9/11, praising the military.

Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments.

The Founders were anything but demigods to themselves and their contemporaries, who recognized full well that the experiment in self-government had only begun.

When a president doesn't know the policy, it doesn't make for a very effective leader.

Previous candidates who get elected are almost always sobered by the office and the responsibility they take on. Donald Trump shows no evidence of that. He's the same Trump that he was when he was host of his reality TV show. He's the same Trump that he was when he was a candidate.

President Obama ran a campaign in 2008 that was entirely expected from a non-incumbent. You promise, and you imply that if you elect me, everything good is going to happen.

The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done.

If the incumbent or his party has been discredited sufficiently, the challenger can run a successful, content-free campaign.

People who teach American history survey classes have a lot of ground to cover and tend to focus on landmarks. You get through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and you have to get to the beginning of the 20th century fast. It's pretty easy to go lightly on the Gilded Age.

When a president was elected with foreign policy experience, it was usually less about his foreign policy experience than other things.

A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war.

Reagan's enduring value as a conservative icon stems from his resolute preaching of the conservative gospel, in words that still warm the hearts of the most zealous conservatives. Yet Reagan's value as a conservative model must begin with recognition of his flexibility in the pursuit of his conservative goals.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Texas gets a lot more out of being part of the United States than the United States gets out of having Texas as one of the states.

It's hard to say that Trump actually has a health care policy.

Booker Washington was essentially the head Republican boss in the South. He was a power broker.

In the business arena, the standard rules of morality don't apply. What we're really looking for is efficiency. It doesn't do anyone any good to be nice to the weak. In a certain sense, competition is inefficient.

Love makes the most careful man wreckless.

It wasn't the smiling Trump that people elected. It was the frowning, glowering, angry Donald Trump that people elected.

I certainly don't think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class.

On style points alone, Donald Trump makes GWB look magnificently presidential.

Harry Truman's decision to fire Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War in April 1951 shocked the American political system and astonished the world. Much of the world didn't realize the president had the power to fire a five-star general; much of America didn't realize Truman had the nerve.

Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it.

Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office.

I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will.

The American political system is based on the president taking the initiative and Congress responding. With President Trump, it's been the opposite.