People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.

I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.

Coolidge liked the dignity of the presidency. He didn't get on the phone easily. It's possible that he banished the phone from his desk. He was known to use it from time to time. The person who was hilarious with the phone was Hoover. He was a real engineer. He made a closed circuit phone where he could call the important people and they could call him, a government hotline, but it was closed. He shut out the possibility of input from people he didn't expect to get input from.

Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with.

The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job; depression is when I lose mine.