Douglas Brinkley Quotes

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography - Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh, my pantheon of favorite heroes. Then I would write my own things and sew them together and try to make my own book.

If you're a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you're treated as royalty. And in the United States, we're endlessly fascinated by the family.

It is a long revisionist road up from the bottom for George W. Bush. He is ranked toward the bottom rung of presidents.

I think there's a green side to John Kerry, if you like, that he's an environmental activist. His record on the environment is as best as you have on a pro-environment record of anybody in the U.S. Senate.

Forget politics. The real story is the advancements being made in medicine. We're on the verge of conquering cancer and Alzheimer's and numerous other diseases. The DNA revolution has just begun. Scientific advancement usually trumps politics.

I think Ronald Reagan is what happened....The age of Reagan brought conservatism into the mainstream....It also brought us the beginning of the new media-talk radio, the internet, cable television.

Animals interest me more than anything else.

John Kerry can be absolutely ruthless. I would not want to be on his enemies list when he's ready to go after you.

Do we pour $40 billion into grandiose Louisiana engineering projects or do we instead put up no trespassing- signs in the areas below sea level? All are hard choices with various merits and pains. The important thing, however, is for America to decide whether the current policy of inaction is really the way we want to deal with the worst natural disaster in our history.

John Kerry doesn't think in terms of black-and-white. He's all gray, and he looks at all sides of the issues. That makes people think he likes to be devil's advocate. Whatever you say, he'll challenge you on.

John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt.

I feel like I'm always learning from people.

Demeanor-wise, Reagan was a conservative, but a pragmatic conservative, and he found silver linings in things. He liked to be a mediator. He didn't like to have enemies around him.

I have a lot of books I want to write.

Politicians wanted to mine the Grand Canyon for zinc and copper, and Theodore Roosevelt said no.

There is nobody that's ever going to fill Ted Kennedy's shoes, and that's a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

I learned more about history and literature in the used bookstores in DC than in college libraries.

Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.