#great

My parents were keen for me to have the education they themselves never had. They weren't able to guide me towards particular books, but they encouraged me to read, which I did, randomly and compulsively. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#acute #affectionate #articulate #deal #drinking

Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#booker #great #i #i think #immune

Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#element #exist #greatest #know #perhaps

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#certitude #entail #evidence #faith #free

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#affection #certain #day #enormous #every

I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt's, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans - but he was also a cold-blooded politician. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#alleviating #also #am #among #believe

Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#economic power #economically #education #ever #great

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#capitol hill #classroom #country #does #great

It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#always #caricatures #comforting #complicated #corporations

Reagan is the Republican FDR, an exemplar of presidential greatness. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#greatness #presidential #reagan #republican