If compassion and mercy are not compatible with politics,” Ford said, “then something is the matter with politics.
Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy’s shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.
Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy’s shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.
For the truly faithful no miracle is necessary. For those who doubt no miracle is sufficient.
A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights.
On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.
Pour a liquid out of its container, and it changes shape, fills the space you give it. If you give children a lot of space, it may surprise you where they’ll go and the shape they’ll take.
The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.
‘Sesame Street’s’ genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things – death, divorce, danger – in terms that children understand and accept.
After 9/11, whatever the evidence of intelligence failures, many people still saw that attack as almost unimaginable, so brutal and brazen an assault.
Making distinctions is part of learning. So is making mistakes.
A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon.
I’ve always found that once you’re in the door of a place and you have the chance to show how you operate and how talented you are, then anything can happen.
Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.
In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion.
There are many things that matter much more than an editor’s gender in shaping the direction of the leadership.
Right now, doctors can test for about 2,500 medical conditions, but they only can treat about 500 of those. So what do you do with the knowledge about the others?
The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political – and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone’s deeply held beliefs.
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.
The real luxury travel of the modern age is not through space it’s through time.
In design as in life, smart can also mean wise, kind, inspiring – and cost-effective. And that has a charm all its own.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright would baptize Obama, perform his marriage to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, baptize their daughters, and draw him into the raucous, restless family of faith that Obama had never known before.
Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination’s dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.
Enter politics, and you enter the glass house; there are no secrets and no places to hide.
Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.
Emotional life grows out of an area of the brain called the limbic system, specifically the amygdala, whence come delight and disgust and fear and anger.