David Herbert Donald Quotes

• If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

  David Herbert Donald

  Thinking, Detectives, Tasks

  8 Copy quote

• At the beginning, Lincoln was so inexperienced he had reverence for military expertise, not realizing that there wasn't any military expertise, that the most anybody had commanded up to that point had been somebody, some troops in the Mexican War, and it had been years ago.

  David Herbert Donald

  Military, War, Years

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• Well, it seems to me Lincoln, I suppose, is kind of a model of a particular sort of presidency, a presidency that first of all is elected by a minority of the votes.

  David Herbert Donald

  Firsts, Minorities, Vote

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• I was able to sit at Lincoln's side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him.

  David Herbert Donald

  Writing, People, Able

  6 Copy quote

• The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.

  David Herbert Donald

  Ambition, Careers, Accomplishment

  9 Copy quote

• I'm not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today.

  David Herbert Donald

  Presidential, Today, Not Sure

  4 Copy quote

• In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.

  David Herbert Donald

  Religious, Prayer, President

  7 Copy quote

• Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public.

  David Herbert Donald

  Might, Tests, Lists

  4 Copy quote

• The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.

  David Herbert Donald

  President, Process, Understood

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• I love mysteries, and I read them every night before I go to bed.

  David Herbert Donald

  Book, Reading, Night

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• Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

  David Herbert Donald

  Writing, Stories, Mystery

  6 Copy quote

• Here is Theodore Roosevelt with all his faults and with all his strengths - the devoted family man, the passionate game hunter, the astute politician, the frustrated warrior. This is a deeply moving account of the last years of a very great man.

  David Herbert Donald

  Moving, Warrior, Men

  5 Copy quote

• Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript, though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!

  David Herbert Donald

  Prepared, Manuscripts, Speakers

  4 Copy quote

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