H. W. Brands Quotes

As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

This will last, Mr. President, as long as you are President and beyond.

Sometimes a President seems greater after he has left office than while he was in it.

Now in my view, if you were to line up the Presidents in the order of who made the greatest accomplishments, you'd put Lyndon Johnson in that arena with both Roosevelts probably, and [Abraham] Lincoln and so on. But the idea that Lyndon Johnson was operating as a free agent and coming up with these ideas on his own is nonsense.

Well, Warren Harding, I have got you the presidency. What are you going to do with it?

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

One of the things I learned in editing 'The Reagan Diaries' is to never say what Reagan would do, because he surprised people.

The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

I don't think there is one president that's come down the line that hasn't done something good somewhere.

The Obamas have changed the culture of the White House.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

I was able to sit at Lincoln's side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him.

Every president, as he nears the end of his final term in office, thinks about his place in history.

We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.

John Quincy Adams ranks with Jimmy Carter on the roster of ex-presidential redemption. Instead of completing a biography of his father, he let himself be elected to the House, where he spent nine terms in Whiggish opposition to the Democrats, supporting a national bank and a protective tariff and internal improvements.

Until Eleanor Roosevelt, there was only one or two First Ladies in all of American history who made an impact, who people could even have recognized or identified. And it's really only been since Jackie Kennedy that there's been this idea that the family life of the president is such a central thing.

Some might think that George W. Bush had his shortcomings, but let me tell you something - history's going to be kind to George W. Bush.

When you leave the White House, you wonder if you’ll ever draw a crowd again.

Never underestimate the power of an American President in his early days.

I don't think the first hundred days measures the success or failure of any President.

President [William Howard] Taft is an amiable man, completely surrounded by men who know exactly what they want.