Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes

Quotes about:

• Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Inspirational, Leadership, People

  33 Copy quote

• Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare's kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Kings, Europe, Spain

  49 Copy quote

• Lyndon Johnson is still the most formidable, fascinating, frustrating, irritating individual I think I've ever known in my entire life. He was huge, a huge character, not only standing six feet four, but when you talked to him, he violated the normal human space between people. He was a great storyteller. The problem was that half his stories, I discovered, weren't true.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Character, Thinking, Space

  5 Copy quote

• I think some people who go into public life, if they go in needing the applause of thousands, they're never going to work out successfully in the end, because they don't know who they are apart from the crowds.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Thinking, People, Work Out

  "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

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

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  White, House, President

  11 Copy quote

• I think confidence comes from doing something well, working at it hard, and you build it up. It's not something you're born with. You have to build the confidence as you go along.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Thinking, Born, Wells

  Source: www.achievement.org

  6 Copy quote

• If you interview five people about the same incident, and you see five different points of view, it makes you know what makes history so complicated. Something doesn't just occur. It's not like a scientific event. It's a human event. So the dimensions of it will be seen differently by different people.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Views, People, Dimensions

  Source: www.achievement.org

  8 Copy quote

• Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Passion, Important, Desire

  Source: www.achievement.org

  7 Copy quote

• I think the most important thing I wanted to say at various times to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt was that it seemed so sad to me that - I really believe they loved each other and had a great deal of affection - but because of that early hurt in their marriage, there was a certain kind of distance from then on, until their deaths actually. So at times, I just wanted to push them together and say, "Come on, you guys! I know you love each other. This is crazy!"

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Hurt, Distance, Crazy

  "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Academy of Achievemnt, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Stories, Information, Mass

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Struggle, Grateful, Past

  "Doris Kearns Goodwin: Living With the Presidents". Interview with Susan Sarfati, www.pcmaconvene.org. January 1, 2014.

  16 Copy quote

• If your ambition comes at the price of an unbalanced life, that there's nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it's not worth it.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Ambition, Giving, Comfort

  4 Copy quote

• Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Enemy, Tents

  9 Copy quote

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

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Past, Self, Filters

  20 Copy quote

• 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.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Leadership, People, Opinion

  11 Copy quote

• I think with Lyndon Johnson, the most important thing I learned was that he never had the sense of security that comes from inside. It always depended on other people making him feel good about himself, which meant that he was always beholden, continually needing to succeed. He could never stop. There was such a restlessness in him.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Thinking, People, Feel Good

  Source: www.achievement.org

  5 Copy quote

• What the American Dream means to me is the fact that - what founded this country - when I think about those posters that were put up in Europe, which said, "Come to America and you'll have golden sidewalks. The land will be yours." There was something so inspirational about the fact that these immigrants from all over the world felt that here was a place of freedom, a place of opportunity.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Country, Dream, Mean

  Source: www.achievement.org

  6 Copy quote

• The one thing that John Kennedy did, above all else, was to energize young people to feel that they wanted to give something to their country. I just hope, for young people of this generation, that they'll experience that feeling once again, that by working on large goals, they can do something more than their own individual ambition.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Country, Ambition, People

  "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Academy of Achievemnt Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

• Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together. We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748)

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Country, Strong, Powerful

  13 Copy quote

• What I learned, more than anything, was that you can't have it all balanced perfectly at any one time. When I was young, it was much more balanced toward work. When I had my children, it was much more balanced toward love and family, and I didn't get a lot of work done. So you can't ask of it to be perfectly balanced at any time, but your hope is, before you die, you've somehow had each of those spheres come to life. That's probably more important than success in any one of those spheres alone.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Children, Important, Spheres

  "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Library, Fear Not

  9 Copy quote

• Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Sports, Retirement, Motivation

  7 Copy quote

• As much research as you think you're doing, you're going to mess up, without a question.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Thinking, Doing You, Research

  Source: www.achievement.org

  4 Copy quote

• When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Integrity, Writing, Looks

  "Lessons of Presidential Leadership". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 28, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

• I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Responsibility, Wish, Figures

  "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. November 11, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

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