Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes

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

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

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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.

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

My books are written with a strong chronological spine. (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

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

An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school.

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

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.

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

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

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

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)

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

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

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin - Image

Photo: Fuzheado, CC BY 4.0

Occupation: American Historian
Born: January 4, 1943
Quotes count: 23

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