Jon Meacham Quotes

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs.

All presidents are subject to the tides of revisionist history, their legacies constantly in flux.

Donald Trump, perhaps the least historically minded man ever to reach the pinnacle of power, has fallen under the spell of what (and who) has come before. What's revealing about a President's sense of history is less about the history itself than about what that President's perspective on the history tells us about him.

There is a strong propaganda value to history as taught in American Schools

Donald Trump is a fascist.

Every time we revise our history, we also revise the mythology of our history.

In my generation, history was taught in terms of grand figures, men on whom the destiny of the nation hinged, quintessential heroes.

I get plenty of, 'Is that song about me?' from men but I just tell them to get over themselves.

I've always been a narcissist.

I do not recall spending long hours in front of a mirror loving my reflection.

Vanity is but the surface.

My daughter will be reading about Pat Buchanan in a history book someday, and I am hanging out fist-bumping with him and joking with him.

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.

I have such an ego 'cause I'm a double Leo. I can't let go of me, you know, so it's very difficult for me to be somebody else and not me. I'm so into me.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

People think if you're a model then you must take yourself way too seriously.

Mirrors are ice which do not melt: what melts are those who admire themselves in them.

If you see a man who is so obviously impressed with his own appearance, then you wonder what his priorities are.

Narcissism has existed for a long time; social media is just a new outlet to express it. Anybody who is going to record themselves and put that on the Internet, hoping people will watch, there is a degree to which that exists, yeah. I don't know if I would call myself a narcissist. I don't necessarily identify with that label.

Hollywood is full of men who need wraparound mirrors so that they never have a moment when they can't check themselves out. I love guys who don't worry about what they look like, who aren't aware of how attractive they are.

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

Mr. Nixon … will, with time, be a landmark in the history of quiet, determined desperation.

It has been a habit of presidents to try to write their own history, to establish themselves as a legitimate embodiment of America's past and shaper of America's future.

Richard M. Nixon ... has a deeper concern for his place in history than for the people he governs. And history will not fail to note that fact.

History is past politics, and politics present history.