“But even a wonderful soloist needs a song. Even a pitch-perfect voice needs a message.”

“Author points out in Woodrow Wilson the flipside of the positive we might call big picture vision. He observes that as college president Wilson resorted to the language of a national crusade when he met resistance in a local, academic issue.”

“TR on using extramarital accusations against Wilson: "It won't work. You can't cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts like an apothecary's clerk.”

“Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".”

“Though there is no evil in righteousness, there is in self-righteousness,”

“The right to resign is one of the cherished privileges of a free man; the willingness to resign, when principle and the public interest are served, is always present in the public-spirited and the self-respecting. They look upon resigning, not as a cowardice and quitting and a personal disaster, but as the ultimate guarantee of their useful influence and of their personal dignity. - Walter Lippmann”

“Yet Barkley drew back. Perhaps he, like Harry Truman, knew that the quiet power of incumbency easily overcomes the noise of crowds and bands.”