Jean Edward Smith > Quotes

“He lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift the nation from its knees.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“Jealousy knows no logic, nor does it respect reciprocity.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“The Italian government, a free French newspaper tartly observed, never finished a war on the same side it started on – unless the war lasted long enough to change sides twice.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Eisenhower on Patton: "Fundamentally, he is so avid for recognition as a great commander that he won't with ruthlessly suppress any habit that will jeopardize it.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.”
― Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

“The loneliness of command had made Eisenhower emotionally self-sufficient.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“As proof that HOW we see things matters, Gen. Montgomery took a preprepared text that had been deemed an innocuous complement to his American troops and delivered it in such a way that his condescension prompted more division than unity.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“The Army of Eisenhower’s day valued understatement. With rare exceptions generals did not decorate themselves like Christmas trees. Action spoke for itself. Nothing did that more eloquently than the simple soldier’s funeral of the nation’s thirty-fourth president. On April 2, 1969, in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was laid to rest in the presence of his family. He was buried in a government-issue, eighty-dollar pine coffin, wearing his famous Ike jacket with no medals or decorations other than his insignia of rank.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Among all the powerful nations of the world the United States is the only one with a tradition of anti-colonialism.” That was an asset of incalculable value. “It means our counsel is trusted where that of others may not be. It is essential to our position of leadership in a world wherein the majority of the nations have at some time or another felt the yoke of colonialism.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“The hard decisions,” Ridgway added, “are not the ones you make in the heat of battle. Far harder to make are those involved in speaking your mind about some hare-brained scheme, which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain, and the only results will be the needless sacrifice of priceless lives.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Patton would have said a warmer goodbye to his horse, The author writes on Eisenhower's cold dismissal of his wartime lover.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invited a sentry out of the rain and gave him his own dry uniform.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“From what I hear of what has been appearing in the newspapers,” Ike wrote his son John, “you are learning that it is easy enough for a man to be a newspaper hero one day and a bum the next.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Ike was like a giant umbrella. He absorbed what was coming down from above, shielded his commanders from higher authority, and about them to fight the war without excessive second-guessing.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for. For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“The Eisenhower administration, and Ike himself, bear heavy responsibility for snuffing out responsible government in Iran.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Despite Sumner’s vigorous opposition, the Senate, after an all-night debate, adopted a resolution introduced by Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana authorizing the commission, and the House followed suit.51”
― Jean Edward Smith, Grant

“Not to be overlooked are the four women who played crucial roles in FDR’s life: his mother, Sara; Lucy Mercer, the woman he loved; Missy LeHand, the woman who loved him;”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“Eisenhower and Patton, old friends and figures crucial to the Allies' upcoming success, conferred over yet another gaffe on Patton's part that could have cost him his command. Patton's head is on Ike's shoulder in gratitude, but the scene is rescued from being completely maudlin by Eisenhower's internal question as to whether Patton wears his ever-present helmet to bed.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“I cannot do this," she remembered thinking to herself, but she went anyway. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do," she wrote later, supplying her own emphasis.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Use common sense; don’t magnify the importance of insignificant details; don’t worry about bygones; and keep it simple. Focus, common sense, simplicity, and attitude”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“Lincoln responded: I have just received your dispatch of 1 p.m. yesterday. —I begin to see it. You will succeed. — God bless you all. A. LINCOLN6”
― Jean Edward Smith, Grant

“Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“John Marshall on writing: The man who by seeking embellishment hazards confusion, is greatly mistaken in what constitutes good writing. The meaning ought never to be mistaken. Indeed, the reader should never be obliged to search for it.”
― Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children. I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions. I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“In Washington, Prescott Bush voted consistently with the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He was stalwart on civil rights and a staunch advocate of repealing the discriminatory provisions of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. Prescott”
― Jean Edward Smith, Bush

“Eisenhower studied his mistakes. “We are learning something every day, and in general do not make the same mistake twice.”9 Ike learned to be tougher with subordinates such as Fredendall. “Officers that fail must be ruthlessly weeded out,” Eisenhower wrote his old friend Leonard Gerow. “Considerations of friendship, family, kindness, and nice personality have nothing to do with the problem.… You must be tough.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“...but the problem was more fundamental. Powell and the State Department hoped an agreement with North Korea would be a positive step reducing the threat of nuclear war. Bush, Cheney, and the Vulcans, wedded to a view of the world as a Manichean contest between good and evil, rejected the idea of negotiating with a state they deemed immoral. If the United States had brought the evil empire of the Soviet Union to its knees, why deal with a state vastly smaller, weaker, and more repressive?

Bush's response to Kim Dae-Jung's visit set the tone for the administration. The United States would not enter into an agreement that kept a brutal regime in power. For Bush, foreign policy was an exercise in morality. That appealed to his religious fervor, and greatly simplified dealing with the world beyond America's borders. 'I've got a visceral reaction to this guy...Maybe it's my religion, but I feel passionate about this.' Bush's personalization of foreign policy and his refusal to deal with North Korea was the first of a multitude of errors that came to haunt his presidency. Instead of bringing a denuclearized North Korea peacefully into the family of nations, as seemed within reach in 2001, the Bush administration isolated the government in Pyongyang hoping for its collapse. In the years following, North Korea continued to be an intractable problem for the administration. By the end of Bush's presidency, North Korea had tested a nuclear device and was believed to have tripled its stock of plutonium, accumulating enough for at least six nuclear weapons.

Aside from their attachment to the idea of American hegemony, the worldview of Bush, Cheney, and the Vulcans was predicated on a false reading of history. A keystone belief was that Ronald Reagan's harsh rhetoric and policy of firmness had forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. In actuality, Ronald Reagan's harsh rhetoric during his first three years in office actually intensified the Cold War and heightened Soviet resistance. Not until Reagan changed course, replaced Alexander Haig with George Schultz, and held out an olive branch to the Soviets did the Cold War begin to thaw. Beginning with the Geneva summit in 1985, Reagan would meet with Gorbachev five times in the next three years, including a precedent-shattering visit to the Kremlin and Red Square. What about the 'evil empire' the president was asked. 'I was talking about another time, another era,' said Reagan. President Reagan deserves full credit for ending the Cold War. But it ended because of his willingness to negotiate with Gorbachev and establish a relationship of mutual trust. For Bush, Cheney, and the Vulcans, this was a lesson they had not learned. (p.188-189)”
― Jean Edward Smith, Bush

“Bush saw issues in terms of black and white. There were no subtleties and no shades of gray. The war in Iraq was a biblical struggle of good versus evil—something from the pages of the Book of Revelation. His decision to bring democracy to Iraq was equally arbitrary and unilateral. Bush’s religious fundamentalism often obscured reality. And he expected his cabinet to fall into line, not debate possible alternatives.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Bush