Sublime

But he was about to become—beginning in that summer of 1957—the greatest champion that the liberal senators, and Margaret Frost and the millions of other black Americans, had had since, almost a century before, there had been a President named Lincoln.

I must observe that a burning zeal for the public interest should not dazzle a public official—no matter how well intentioned—so as to blind him to individual amenities. Even where the public authority is entirely correct in his legal position, he should maintain it without inflicting undue hardship or injury. Tyranny, whether it consists of

When ardent Republicans heard Lincoln speak, they knew that if their beloved Seward could not win, they had in the eloquent orator from Illinois a man of considerable capacity whom they could trust, one who would hold fast on the central issue that had forged the party—the fight against extending slavery into the territories. Though Lincoln had

throughout his career, Johnson had shown an uncanny ability to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. As party whip, minority leader, and majority leader, he had taken positions with small bases of power and vastly magnified and multiplied their functions.

Wilson was one of the last presidents to write his own speeches.

When a State is threatened by serious dangers, the people frequently succeeds in selecting the citizens who are the most able to save

For Lyndon Johnson, Monday was a day of applause. Whatever Truman’s feelings toward him had been before, Texas was indispensable to the President’s own election chances in 1948, and two of the men most important if he was to carry Texas were on the train with him: Sam Rayburn and Tom Clark. And, as Evans and Novak were to put it, “for all of his

Be creative.