H. W. Brands Quotes

H. W. Brands

Profession : Historian

Birth : August 7, 1953

To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century.

H. W. Brands

Toward the end of the 1964 presidential campaign, Reagan gives a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater. It was like a screen test for a new career.

H. W. Brands

Reagan conspired in the underestimation of his own ability.

H. W. Brands

Most presidents have not considered 100 days a significant milepost.

H. W. Brands

Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments.

H. W. Brands

In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements - necessary improvements - in the republican experiment they began.

H. W. Brands

Previous candidates who get elected are almost always sobered by the office and the responsibility they take on. Donald Trump shows no evidence of that. He's the same Trump that he was when he was host of his reality TV show. He's the same Trump that he was when he was a candidate.

H. W. Brands

The president of the United States from the 1940s until 2017 was considered the leader of the free world - probably the most powerful person in the world - not simply in terms of America's military might but in terms of the moral authority of the president. Donald Trump has largely abdicated that.

H. W. Brands

Love makes the most careful man wreckless.

H. W. Brands

People who teach American history survey classes have a lot of ground to cover and tend to focus on landmarks. You get through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and you have to get to the beginning of the 20th century fast. It's pretty easy to go lightly on the Gilded Age.

H. W. Brands

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

H. W. Brands

The historic dearth of labor was perhaps the central feature of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

H. W. Brands

The Catalonian movement is quite serious; I don't think it's simply symbolic. I think that they believe that Catalonia can be more successful on its own than as part of Spain.

H. W. Brands

It's not an exaggeration to say that Texas gets a lot more out of being part of the United States than the United States gets out of having Texas as one of the states.

H. W. Brands

A president can start a war under relatively specious circumstances, and once American soldiers are under fire, Americans will support the soldiers and support the president.

H. W. Brands

Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it.

H. W. Brands

A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war.

H. W. Brands

If - heaven forbid - a shooter did come into my class, I wouldn't want to have to worry about getting caught in a crossfire.

H. W. Brands

In the early 19th to the early 20th century, people had a lot of things wrong with them. Doctors didn't know how to fix them, and so they lived with them.

H. W. Brands

The candidate who promises the most has the best chance of winning.

H. W. Brands