Top 44 Douglas Brinkley Quotes

Unfortunately, one of the biggest misperceptions the American public harbors is that Katrina was a week-long catastrophe. In truth, it’s better to view it as an era.

Demeanor-wise, Reagan was a conservative, but a pragmatic conservative, and he found silver linings in things. He liked to be a mediator. He didn’t like to have enemies around him.

I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.

The very fact that Barack Obama – an African-American – was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph.

I think there’s a green side to John Kerry, if you like, that he’s an environmental activist. His record on the environment is as best as you have on a pro-environment record of anybody in the U.S. Senate.

In 1971, near the middle of Nixon’s first term, he approved a plan to install a White House taping system as a way of preserving an accurate chronicle of important discussions and decisions. Except for Nixon, three aides, and the Secret Service, no one knew about the listening devices.

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography – Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh, my pantheon of favorite heroes. Then I would write my own things and sew them together and try to make my own book.

While the scars of the monstrous Civil War still remain, the wounds have closed since 1865, in large part, because of the civility of Grant and Lee.

John Kerry only went to prep schools because he had an aunt who had the money to pay for his way into those prep schools.

Nobody has trusted the Iranian government from day one, but the idea of just refusing to have any kind of talks is dangerous in the extreme. Every administration says at least that we’re trying to have talks between Israel and Palestine and solve the Middle East peace problem.

For years, I longed to hear Armstrong describe what it was like to contemplate Earth from 238,900 miles away. Former Space Center director George Abbey once told me that many NASA astronauts felt that looking at Earth was akin to a religious experience.

If you’re a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you’re treated as royalty. And in the United States, we’re endlessly fascinated by the family.

Rosa Parks’ entire career has been one as working as a civil rights activist.

John Kerry can be absolutely ruthless. I would not want to be on his enemies list when he’s ready to go after you.

I was stunned to find out there had never been a serious, scholarly biography ever written on Rosa Parks.

When we settled our country, the dark forest was considered in some ways evil and something that you needed to plow or, later, bulldoze. We now have a new understanding of the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the need for bird flyways and why all species matter.

Reagan was a pure liberation, free-and-fair election American.

Although Cronkite had once crash landed in a Dutch potato field under enemy fire, he chose instead to focus on celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands at the hands of the Free Dutch.

John Kerry doesn’t think in terms of black-and-white. He’s all gray, and he looks at all sides of the issues. That makes people think he likes to be devil’s advocate. Whatever you say, he’ll challenge you on.

Theodore Roosevelt had been enthralled with the idea of Texas since 1883, when he arrived in the Dakota Territory to ranch cattle.

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year.

Walter Cronkite had a golden rule for all wartime reporters: never self-aggrandize.

What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys.

Having recorded his first album, ‘Tapestry,’ in 1969, in Berkeley, California, during the student riots, McLean, a native New Yorker, became a kind of weather vane for what he called the ‘generation lost in space.’

To Armstrong, constantly speaking about ‘Apollo 11’ only diminished the magic. That’s why he worked overtime to avoid notice, living a quiet life in Indian Hill, Ohio.

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks – everybody, it seems – now congregate around this ponytailed shrine to outlaw country.

I have a lot of books I want to write.

It’s Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.

Richard Kerry not only was a pilot in World War II, but was a civil servant. He did not come from money.

The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it’s more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

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

The superhighway of celebrity and showmanship is filled with debris.

Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors – they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking.

Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people’s hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.

How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads.

While the old spiritual ‘Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last’ was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

I feel like I’m always learning from people.

Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.

Knievel seemed braver and more brazen – and more unhinged – than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era.

Animals interest me more than anything else.

Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when ‘American Pie’ topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape.

There is nobody that’s ever going to fill Ted Kennedy’s shoes, and that’s a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

There is no real way to categorize McLean’s ‘American Pie’ for its hybrid of modern poetry and folk ballad, beer-hall chant and high-art rock.

If D-Day – the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken – failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn’t an option.