H.W. Brands

He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.

Such was the code: Strive for victory, but never seem to be self-involved.

He made his character his platform.

He was trying to find his footing in a world both familiar and foreign

He was a generous but subtly demanding boss.

He (the immigrant father) would walk by proxy in the Elysian fields of liberal learning.

It is more important to me that my students come out of my class believing 'This story is interesting and I might want to know more about it', than to fill them up with information. If I can remind them or convince them that history is interesting then I feel I have succeeded, because unlike chemistry or physics, history is a subject that anyone can teach themselves, if they are interested."[

One of George H. W. Bush's early teachers at Andover wrote, "At the moment he is intellectually immature for his powers of reasoning are not entirely developed.

Employment was better than idleness for men, because it kept the enemy guessing.

The very lack of explicit pressure was itself a compelling force, for it created a world in which the expectation of success was simply there, a fact of life as basic as breakfast.

There was so much _ so many tests and tasks, so many tiny referenda.

I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.

Grant made the perfect candidate, a war hero with indistinct views on most political issues.

Even when he played, he made a business of it.

The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce.

Gold, or at least the prospect of it, saved him, then killed him.

Amid the war the capitalists were asserting national necessity.

William "Boss" Tweed was in such thorough control in New York that he made money off of the report the committee printed after investigating him.