#presidents

The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and perform the transubstantiation of pluribus unum. ↗

— Jonathan Haidt

#politics #presidents #psychology #religion #religion

Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread. ↗

— Jennifer Donnelly

#history #kings #presidents #revolution #president

Presidents are selected, not elected. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#politics #presidency #presidents #voting #president

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#gettysburg-address #us-presidents #equality

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic. ↗

— Henry Adams

#been #effect #had #poison #power

I believe that Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our nation's great Presidents, and Senator Clinton as one of our nation's great public servants. ↗

— Joe Andrew

#bill #bill clinton #clinton #great #i

Letter writing was clearly important to Reagan. Even as president he kept dashing off letters to friends, pen pals, media people, statesmen, critics, and the kind of people who write to presidents never expecting a reply. ↗

— Russell Baker

#critics #even #expecting #friends #important

US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan. ↗

— Daniel Barenboim

#blue #commitments #declarations #face #make

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems. ↗

— Sidney Blumenthal

#bill #bill clinton #clinton #faced #great

But presidents matter. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned being in the White House. ↗

— Sidney Blumenthal

#biggest #house #i #learned #lessons