American Sketches Quotes

“There should be an honored place in history for statesmen whose ideas turned out to be right.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make it.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Knowing when to stand firm on principle or when to find common ground with your fellow citizens is the most important, and also the most difficult, activity in a democracy. There's no simple formula for it. That is why it is so useful to have narratives...”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“It's harder, and less glorious, to realize that legitimate values sometimes conflict with one another, and they have to be balanced. This is not a talent that is exalted on talk radio or cable news shows. But the need to calibrate a proper balance among opposing principles is evident in every issue we face today, from abortion to heath-care reform to affirmative action.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Einstein's was a beautiful mix of confidence and awe.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Just because you can't act EVERYWHERE doesn't mean you don't act ANYWHERE. – Madeleine Albright”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“As much as Henry Kissinger wanted to attribute historical movement to impersonal forces, he too conceded to "the difference personalities make".”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“assessing Ronald Reagan. There are so many basic questions that even his friends cannot quite figure out, such as (to start with the most basic one): Was he smart? From the brilliant-versus-clueless question flows even more complex ones. Was he a visionary who clung to a few verities, or an amiable dunce who floated obliviously above facts and nuances? Was he a stubborn ideological coot or a clever negotiator able to change course when dealing with Congress and the Soviets and movie moguls? Was he a historic figure who stemmed the tide of government expansion and stared down Moscow, or an out-of-touch actor who bloated the deficit and deserves less credit than Gorbachev for ending the cold war? The most solidly reported biography of Reagan so far—indeed, the only solidly reported biography—is by the scrupulously fair newspaperman Lou Cannon, who has covered him since the 1960s. Edmund Morris, who with great literary flair captured the life of Theodore Roosevelt, was given the access to write an authorized biography, but he became flummoxed by the topic; he took an erratic swing by producing Dutch, a semifictionalized ruminative bio-memoir, thus fouling off his precious opportunity. Both Garry Wills in his elegant 1987 sociobiography, Reagan’s America, and Dinesh D’Souza in his 1997 delicate drypoint, Ronald Reagan, do a good job of analyzing why he was able to make such a successful connection with the American people.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. “No other nation,” he wrote in Diplomacy, “has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism.” Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“the rivalry between the big and little states almost tore the convention apart. Their dispute was over whether the legislative branch should be proportioned by population or by equal votes per state. Finally, Franklin arose to make a motion on behalf of a compromise that would have a House proportioned by population and a Senate with equal votes per state. “When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint,” he said. “In like manner here, both sides must part with some of their demands.” His point was crucial for understanding the art of true political leadership: Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies. The toughest part of political leadership, however, is knowing when to compromise and when to stand firm on principle. There is no easy formula for figuring that out, and Franklin got it wrong at times. At the Constitutional Convention, he went along with a compromise that soon haunted him: permitting the continuation of slavery. But he was wise enough to try to rectify such mistakes. After the Constitutional Convention, he became the president of a society for the abolition of slavery. He realized that humility required tolerance for other people’s values, which at times required compromise; however, it was important to be uncompromising in opposing those who refused to show tolerance for others. During his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin donated to the building fund of each and every church built in Philadelphia. And at one point, when a new hall was being built to accommodate itinerate preachers, Franklin wrote the fund-raising document and urged citizens to be tolerant enough so “that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” And on his deathbed, he was the largest individual contributor to the building fund for Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue in Philadelphia.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“Congress decided to put him on a committee to write a declaration explaining why the colonies were seeking independence. It was back in the days when Congress knew how to appoint really good committees: Franklin and Jefferson and John Adams were on it. They knew that leadership required not merely asserting values, but finding a balance when values conflict. We can see that in the deft editing of the famous sentence that opens the second paragraph of the Declaration. “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . ,” Jefferson had written. On the copy of his draft at the Library of Congress we can see the dark printer’s ink and backslashes of Franklin’s pen as he changes it to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” His point was that our rights would come from rationality and the consent of the governed, not the dictates and dogma of any religion. Jefferson’s draft sentence went on to say that all men have certain inalienable rights. We can see Adams’s hand making an addition: “They are endowed by their Creator” with these inalienable rights. So just in the editing of one half of one sentence we can see how Franklin and his colleagues struck a unifying balance between the grace of divine providence and the role of democratic consent in the founding values of our nation.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“However this future evolves, we will have to answer a pressing question: How will writers (or anyone else who creates content that can be digitized, from movies to music to apps to journalism) make a living in an era in which digital content can be freely replicated? That is now my greatest worry as I contemplate the so-called writing life that I hope to continue—and that I hope my daughter and all future generations will continue. For three hundred years, ever since the Statute of Anne was established in Britain, there has been a system under which people who created things, such as books or articles or music or pictures, had a right to benefit from copies that were made of them. Because of this “copyright” system, we have encouraged and rewarded three centuries of creativity in various fields of endeavor, and this has produced a flourishing economy based on the creation by talented individuals of intellectual property. Among other things, this allowed all sorts of people, ranging from Walker Percy on down to me, to make a living at the so-called writing life. May the next generation enjoy that delightful opportunity as well.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“stories involving the troubles in Northern Ireland, Morocco’s war for the Spanish Sahara, and a ring of traders violating the sanctions against Rhodesia. He was exhilarated by danger. Once in Belfast he insisted that we go cover a demonstration, when I was quite content to stay at the bar of the Europa Hotel. He showed me that even though the street clashes might seem violent and bloody on television, just a half block away things were calm and safe. Journalism required an eagerness to get up and go places. While we were out, a bomb went off at the Europa Hotel. Blundy insisted that this should serve as a lesson for me. I agreed. But when he was killed a few years later by a sniper’s bullet in El Salvador, I gave up trying to fathom the meaning of the lesson he wanted me to learn.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“When highbrow critics accused Time of practicing personality journalism, Luce replied that Time did not invent the genre, the Bible did.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“Human actions are determined, beyond their control, by both physical and psychological laws, he believed. It was a concept he drew also from his reading of Schopenhauer, to whom he attributed, in his 1930 “What I Believe” credo, a maxim along those lines:”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane

“Because they were Enlightenment thinkers, the drafters of the Declaration, particularly Jefferson and Franklin, began by positing basic premises, an analytic approach that reflected the philosophical methods of John Locke and the scientific method of Isaac Newton. People were created equal, they postulated, and they had certain unalienable rights. From this premise they deduced what this meant for the role and the legitimacy of governments.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers & Heroes of a Hurricane