When I look at Franklin ...

When I look at Franklin Roosevelt's leadership, I think the most important quality he had during the Depression and the war was this absolute confidence in himself, in his country, really in the American people. He was able to exude that confidence and almost project it.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin

Quotes from the same author

There is a sense of feeling larger than your own life when you're in some common mission together. You have to hope it's not going to take a war to bring that back to America again. I think another time when it seemed to be here was in the early 1960s.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin
I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing I take more seriously.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin
Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin
As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin
Even though Lyndon Johnson's presidency was in many ways scarred forever by the war in Vietnam, and destroyed in a lot of ways, he - as a character - was even larger than his presidency. Being able to get to know him well, that firsthand relationship with this large character, I think is what drew me to writing books about presidents.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin