Doris Kearns Goodwin · 759 pages
Rating: (33K votes)
“We do not have to become heroes overnight,” Eleanor once wrote. “Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”
“She feared that she would become a slave to superficial, symbolic duties.”
“If I wasn't busy," she replied, "I'd go crazy.”
“The domestic scene,” she admitted, referring not only to the coal dispute but to a rash of racial disturbances that had recently broken out, “is anything but encouraging and one would like not to think about it, because it gives one a feeling that, as a whole, we are not really prepared for democracy.”
“FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them.”
“The same magazines which not long before advertised products which would quickly allow women to return to their war work now extolled elaborate recipes which women could attempt if they stayed home and vacated jobs for men.”
“The habit of mobility had become ingrained.”
“Spring had come to Washington. The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Yet the glacial mood of the capital refused to melt. Accusations”
“If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.”
“The author writes that key FDR aide Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.”
“We should constantly be reminded of what we owe in return for what we have.”
“Through the last days of May and the early days of June, Eleanor”
“Nothing so extraordinary has ever happened in American politics,” a dazed Harold Ickes wrote. “Here was a man—a Democrat until a couple of years ago—who, without any organization went into a Republican National Convention and ran away with the nomination for President . ”
“Eleanor had defended over the years, that the money spent on arms would be much better spent on education and medical care.”
“On the morning of June 20, at a hastily arranged conference at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, a new umbrella organization was born with Eleanor as honorary chair—the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. The purpose of the new committee was to coordinate all the different agencies and resources available in the United States for the care of refugee children.”
“Dabney is convinced that the Dream Realm exists. That’s why he’s such a thorn in the president’s side. Dabney says our job isn’t to keep humans scared. Our job is to help humans face their fears. And if we do our jobs well, we deserve to retire. The Dream Realm is our reward.”
“We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us.
“What are you doing?” I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn’t about to let him beat me.
“There’s a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world,” he shouted. “They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat.”
“You’re not that kind of Indian,” I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat.
“You should try it, too!”
“No way!” I replied without turning around to face him. “The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something.”
“Aw, come on, Maisie,” he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. “I dare you.”
“What the hell happened, then? Where’s the body?’ Daniels was annoyed. ‘Out back in the conservatory, it’s all kinds of fucked up,’ Grey offered.”
“Her beauty radiated from her core and touched every morsel of her exterior … and it only seems to have gotten better with age.”
“I wonder if the brass understands that people are getting killed.”
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