Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.

'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.

A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

FDR once said he was like a cat, that he would pounce and then relax. That's much harder to do in the 24-hour cable world, because it's almost like the press demands of you to be saying something or doing something every day.

I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing I take more seriously.

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'

I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.

I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.

I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.

I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment.

I've been to the White House a number of times.

Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.

Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.

My books are written with a strong chronological spine.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?'

Obama does seem to have what both FDR and Lincoln had, which is the recognition that you have to hold back at times and then wait to come forward.

People tease me about knowing somehow that Obama would put Clinton into the cabinet, and everybody would talk about a team of rivals.

Taft was Roosevelt's handpicked successor. I didn't know how deep the friendship was between the two men until I read their almost four hundred letters, stretching back the to early '30s. It made me realize the heartbreak when they ruptured was much more than a political division.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

There are but a handful of times in the history of our country when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge.

Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.

We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that.

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

I wanted to be a part of the Disney history.

Research is of considerable importance in certain fields, such as science and history.

What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

The history of Christianity, therefore, must be of concern to all who are interested in the record of man and particularly to all who seek to understand the contemporary human scene.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of our game is the black race.

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

I got a call to come in and meet Fox, and the rest is history.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.