H.W. Brands > Quotes

“Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adulthood, "This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“Reagan to son: how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.”
― H.W. Brands, Reagan: The Life

“Shiloh showed him what he could ask of his men, and indeed what he MUST ask of them.”
― H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

“The audience perked up the more. American conservatives were a combative tribe who didn’t speak of liberals as their “friends,” but here Reagan did. His tone was serious, but it wasn’t angry, the way Goldwater’s often was. Reagan criticized Democratic leaders, but he didn’t criticize Democrats. He condemned the direction the American government was going, but he professed confidence in the American people.”
― H.W. Brands, Reagan: The Life

“From all over the planet they came…. They came in companies and alone, with money and without, knowing and naïve. They tore themselves from warm hearths and good homes, promising to return; they fled from cold hearts and bad debts, never to return. They were farmers and merchants and sailors and slaves and abolitionists and soldiers of fortune and ladies of the night. They jumped bail to start their journey, and jumped ship at journey’s end. They were the pillars of their communities, and their communities’ dregs….”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“The House adjourned without voting on the bill, but the following year a similar bill—mandating equality in hotels and restaurants open to the public, in transportation facilities, in theaters and other public amusements and in the selection of juries—passed both chambers. The measure reached the White House about the time the two sides in Louisiana cobbled a compromise that allowed Grant to withdraw Sheridan and most of the federal troops. On March 1, 1875, the president signed the Civil Rights Act, the most ambitious affirmation of racial equality in American history until then (a distinction it would retain until the 1960s).”
― H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

“or creed.” These rights included: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. Roosevelt”
― H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“As when some carcass, hidden in sequestered nook, draws from every near and distant point myriads of discordant vultures, so drew these little flakes of gold the voracious sons of men. …This little scratch upon the earth to make a backwoods mill-race touched the cerebral nerve that quickened humanity, and sent a thrill throughout the system. It tingled in the ear and at the finger-ends; it buzzed about the brain and tickled in the stomach; it warmed the blood and swelled the heart; new fires were kindled on hearth-stones, new castles builded in the air. If Satan from Diablo’s peak had sounded the knell of time; if a heavenly angel from the Sierra’s height had heralded the millennial day; if the blessed Christ himself had risen from that ditch and proclaimed to all mankind amnesty — their greedy hearts had never half so thrilled. (Hubert Howe Bancroft)”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be.”
― H.W. Brands, The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War

“He was trying to find his footing in a world both familiar and foreign”
― H.W. Brands

“We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one,”
― H.W. Brands, Reagan: The Life

“He was like a man thinking on an abstract subject all the time.”
― H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

“where the ballot-box, more precious than any work in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“Go on and finish your studies,” Gore said. “You are poor enough, but there are greater evils than poverty. Live on no man’s favor. What bread you do eat, let it be the bread of independence. Pursue your profession. Make yourself useful to your friends and a little formidable to your enemies, and you have nothing to fear.”
― H.W. Brands, Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants

“He was not a warm person, but he seemed to be, which in politics was more important.”
― H.W. Brands

“As the golden news spread beyond California to the outside world, it triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. From all over the planet they came—from Mexico and Peru and Chile and Argentina, from Oregon and Hawaii and Australia and New Zealand and China, from the American North and the American South, from Britain and France and Germany and Italy and Greece and Russia.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Even when he played, he made a business of it.”
― H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

“Franklin appreciated the possibility of self-delusion in such matters. He regularly examined his motives. For the present at least, regarding the struggle with the proprietors, he was satisfied. “I am persuaded that I do not oppose their views from pique, disappointment, or personal resentment, but, as I think, from a regard to the public good. I may be mistaken in what is that public good; but at least I mean well.” The proprietors quite clearly did not. “I am sometimes ashamed for them, when I see them differing with their people for trifles, and instead of being adored, as they might be, like demi-gods, become the object of universal hatred and contempt.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“When I speak, I speak to the point, and when I act in earnest, I act to the point. If a man minds his own business, I let him alone, but if he crosses my path, he must get out of the way.”
― H.W. Brands, American Colossus

“Bradley admitted. “The swiftness and magnitude of the victory were mind-boggling. We had been on the point of despair, bracing for a ‘Dunkirk’ at Pusan and/or a disaster at Inchon. A mere two weeks later the North Korean Army had been routed and all South Korea had been regained. MacArthur was deservedly canonized as a ‘military genius.’ Inchon was his boldest and most dazzling victory. In hindsight, the JCS seemed like a bunch of Nervous Nellies to have doubted.”
― H.W. Brands, The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War

“Truman’s bold stroke in firing MacArthur ended his own career as surely as it terminated MacArthur’s, but it sustained hope that humanity might survive the nuclear age. The courage of Truman’s decision had never been in question; six decades later, its wisdom was apparent as well.”
― H.W. Brands, The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War

“Gen. Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.”
― H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

“Where James swung his pen like a broadsword, Ben wielded a rapier. His satire was always light, never ponderous; it usually brought smiles to objective lips and must occasionally have turned up the corners of even Cotton Mather’s mouth. With his own name now on the masthead, Ben refrained from labeling the colony’s notables hypocrites; instead he spoofed their obsession with titles. “Adam was never called Master Adam; we never read of Noah Esquire, Lot Knight and Baronet, nor the Right Honourable Abraham, Viscount Mesopotamia, Baron of Carran. … We never read of the Reverend Moses, nor the Right Reverend Father in God, Aaron, by Divine Providence, Lord Arch-Bishop of Israel.” He got his point across, less dramatically but more effectively than James had.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“When she died, he didn’t simply put away his feelings for her; he walled off a wing of the emotional house in which he lived. He would marry again and become devoted to his second wife. He would overflow with paternal feelings for his children. But he would never again visit that part of his personality where he had courted Alice.”
― H.W. Brands, T.R.: A Life

“Franklin conceded error in printing the line. He knew what “black gowns” referred to, although he said he had never encountered “sea hens” before. Could he do the thing over, he would refuse to print the notice. “However, ’tis done and cannot be revoked.” In his defense he adduced some mitigating factors: that he harbored no ill will toward those allegedly slandered, and in fact claimed customers and friends among the Anglican clergy; that he had printed more than a thousand advertisements since opening shop, and this was the first that had given such offense; that if he had intended injury against the clergy, this was an exceedingly foolish way to accomplish it, as the backlash demonstrated; and—not incidentally—“that I got five shillings by it” and “that none who are angry with me would have given me so much to let it alone.” He recited a fable illustrating his predicament: A certain well-meaning man and his son were travelling towards a market town, with an ass which they had to sell. The road was bad, and the old man therefore rid [rode], but the son went afoot. The first passenger they met asked the father if he was not ashamed to ride by himself and suffer the poor lad to wade along through the mire; this induced him to take up his son behind him. He had not travelled far when he met others, who said they were two unmerciful lubbers to get both on the back of that poor ass, in such a deep road. Upon this the old man gets off and let his son ride alone. The next they met called the lad a graceless, rascally young jackanapes to ride in that manner through the dirt while his aged father trudged along on foot; and they said the old man was a fool for suffering it. He then bid his son come down and walk with him, and they travelled on leading the ass by the halter; till they met another company, who called them a couple of senseless blockheads for going both on foot in such a dirty way when they had an empty ass with them, which they might ride upon. The old man could bear no longer. My son, he said, it grieves me much that we cannot please all these people. Let us throw the ass over the next bridge, and be no farther troubled with him. Franklin noted that should the old man have been seen acting on this resolution, he would have been judged even more the fool for trying to please everyone. “Therefore, though I have a temper almost as complying as his, I intend not to imitate him in this last particular. I consider the variety of humours among men, and despair of pleasing everybody; yet I shall not therefore leave off printing. I shall continue my business. I shall not burn my press and melt my letters.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“Truman’s combination of firmness and patience had held freedom’s ground without provoking war. It was hard to imagine any chief executive doing better.”
― H.W. Brands, The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War

“In any event, it caused him to join the army, that historic institution of elevation for the ambitious but badly born.”
― H.W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream

“Reporter Jacob Riis made it his mission to expose the horrors of poverty in New York. New to working with a camera, his flash actually set the walls of One apartment inhabited by five blind people on fire.”
― H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

“Franklin took as much pride in encouraging the creation of the Philadelphia fire companies as in nearly anything else he did. Writing late in life, after he had visited every city in America and many of those in Europe, he said, “I question whether there is a city in the world better provided with the means of putting a stop to beginning conflagrations; and in fact since those institutions, the city has never lost by fire more than one or two houses at a time.” By then Franklin was a world-renowned scientific and political figure, feted for taming lightning and tyrants; that such a mundane improvement as fire prevention gave him such pleasure reflected his solid grounding in the affairs of ordinary life.”
― H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin