72+ Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes On Biography, Legacy And Large

Doris Kearns Goodwin is an American historian, biographer, and political commentator. She is best known for her biographies of U.S. presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Goodwin has also written and spoken extensively about the use of history in contemporary politics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin on leadership, biography, leadership.

Top 10 Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes

1. Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
2. The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.
10. People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Short Quotes

• Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.
• I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.
• I've been to the White House a number of times.
• A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.
• My books are written with a strong chronological spine.
• I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.
• As much research as you think you're doing, you're going to mess up, without a question.
• An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes About Love

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

I think, as a president, you have to want respect. You can't look for love from the American people. You have to just do what you think is right. Some people will hate you, but others, in the long run, will respect you for what you've done. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

Doris Kearns Goodwin Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

(from John Hay's diary) “The President never appeared to better advantage in the world,” Hay proudly noted in his diary. “Though He knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of that committee, he never cringed to them for an instant. He stood where he thought he was right and crushed them with his candid logic. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

Even though Lyndon Johnson's presidency was in many ways scarred forever by the war in Vietnam, and destroyed in a lot of ways, he - as a character - was even larger than his presidency. Being able to get to know him well, that firsthand relationship with this large character, I think is what drew me to writing books about presidents. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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

Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

The value that I found in interviewing was for an educational experience, just to know that history itself is subjective, that you can't say, "It happened." Do the best you can with what you think happened, but a lot of other people are going to see it happening differently. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When I look at Franklin Roosevelt's leadership, I think the most important quality he had during the Depression and the war was this absolute confidence in himself, in his country, really in the American people. He was able to exude that confidence and almost project it. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

all through my childhood, my father kept from me the knowledge that the daily papers printed daily box scores, allowing me to believe that without my personal renderings of all those games he missed while he was at work, he would be unable to follow our team in the only proper way a team should be followed, day by day, inning by inning. In other words, without me, his love for baseball would be forever incomplete. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

I've chosen to be a commentator and an analyzer of politics, rather than an actual doer of it. I think it could have gone the other way, but I'm not sorry that it didn't, because this made it easier to be home with my kids and to spend time with them. Writing you can do right in your house. You don't have to go anywhere. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

It took me five years on Lyndon Johnson, ten years on the Kennedys, six years on the Roosevelts. Inevitably, you get shaped by the people that you're thinking about during that period of time. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

I think the most important advice is, a person doesn't have to find out right away. It's not like their first attempt at finding a profession is the only one they're going to find. I might well have gone down other paths, and it still might have been okay. But if you find something that you love, and if it keeps deepening with each new experience, then just stay with it. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Many kids think unless they go to one of these great Ivy League schools, which I was lucky enough to go to later, that they won't get the same kind of learning. But I learned just the opposite lesson; that my best teachers were not at Harvard University. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I keep thinking that history runs in cycles, and that some day certain large issues will come before the country again. There will be leaders that inspire young people. I don't think it means that it's over forever, but I'm getting pretty impatient. I'm hoping it comes soon, so that my young people can know that experience that we knew in the '60s, and that the World War II generation knew during the '40s. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When I do research, I have done - 90 percent of my time is the research, the other ten percent is the writing. So I don't have to face a blank piece of paper. I can look at this as a quote that I have from somewhere. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

There are 20,000 million books I could have to read, but I can pick the ones and know that I'm learning something that I didn't know before. That's the glory of writing. It's not even so much the writing, it's what you learn - especially history - because so much of it is research. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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

Perhaps no American family-with the possible exception of the Adams family-has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times. But the Kennedy tale-the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy-exerts a fascination upon us that goes beyond their public achievements. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

You can be enormously effective for a period of time, because it's almost like there's an engine in you that needs to keep going, and you have a greater drive than other people - who may be more happy and balanced in life - because you have to keep going out and proving yourself over and over again. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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? — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think that's still what the American Dream means: that with perseverance, with hard work, you can become something, that the classes won't prevent you from becoming, that there's a movement up that ladder with hard work. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think if I were reading to a grandchild, I might read Tolstoy's War and Peace. They would learn about Russia, they would learn about history, they would learn about human nature. They would learn about, "Can the individual make a difference or is it great forces?" Tolstoy is always battling with those large issues. Mostly, a whole world would come alive for them through that book. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

The turn of the century was the age of the banker, so much so that the leading bankers of the day had become legendary figures in the public imagination-vast, overshadowing behemoths whose colossal power seemed to reach everywhere. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

What interested me most about the Kennedys was the family situation. Somehow, they had created this family that lasted over time, they had a sense of connection to one another. Especially now, when people are spread all over the country and they don't see grandparents and parents, this family bonded together. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

As a consequence [of a closed economic circle], in 1912 there was not a single Irishman who sat on a single board of a major Boston bank. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When you are an historian, there's probably nothing that matters more than to be recognized by your colleagues in your own profession. I was lucky enough to win the Pulitzer Prize for History. I had to give a talk right after that to some young people. The most important thing to tell them, I think, is that you can't ever know that it's going to turn out that way. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Sometimes people will find things that are wrong. Sometimes they will even find an approach that you took wrong. If you think you took the right approach, then you just absorb the criticism, but you don't change your mind. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

What I think I've learned is that you're never going to get it all right, and you can't obsess about having a fact wrong or a date wrong or something like that, as long as you tried as best you could. If you've done the kind of research that you're sure is pretty good, then you just have to have confidence in it, so that nothing is perfect in life. I think that is what the criticism has helped me to understand. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I'd like to think that what my style of writing is, is an attempt not so much to judge the characters that I'm writing about, to expose them, to label them, to stereotype them, but instead to make them come alive for the reader with all their strengths and their flaws intact. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

One of the important qualities that I think is often overlooked is just energy. It's vitality, and sort of a life force that some people have and others don't. Probably that is connected to a love of whatever it is that they're doing. Another quality that I think is central is confidence. Again, some people are more blessed with that than others. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

There is a sense of feeling larger than your own life when you're in some common mission together. You have to hope it's not going to take a war to bring that back to America again. I think another time when it seemed to be here was in the early 1960s. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The White House is such an extraordinary, simple, beautiful place. It's an extraordinary piece of our history, because it is the one thing that binds our country together. We don't have a king obviously, but we have this president, and the fact that almost all of them have lived in the same place, and so much history took place in those rooms. You can't help but feel awe-inspired by being there. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Life Lessons by Doris Kearns Goodwin

1. Doris Kearns Goodwin teaches us to never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult the path may be. She has persevered through many challenges in her life and career, and her example shows us that hard work and dedication can lead to success.
2. Goodwin also emphasizes the importance of learning from our mistakes and using them as a source of growth. Through her own experiences, she encourages us to be resilient and to use our mistakes as an opportunity to become better.
3. Finally, Goodwin teaches us the value of collaboration and teamwork. She has worked with many different people throughout her career, and her example highlights the power of working together to achieve great things.