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1 " The biographer is often asked at the conclusion of his project whether he has grown to like or dislike his subject. The answer of course is both. But the question is misplaced. This biographer's greatest fear was not that he might come to admire or disapprove of his subject, but that he might end up enervated by years of research into another man's life and times. That was, fortunately, never the case. The highest praise I can offer Andrew Carnegie is to profess that, after these many years of research and writing, I find him one of the most fascinating men I have encountered, a man who was many things in his long life, but never boring. "
― David Nasaw , Andrew Carnegie
2 " In those helter-skelter days of journalism between the Spanish-American War and World War I, the newsies shouting the headlines were as much a part of the urban street scene as the lampposts on every corner. "
― David Nasaw , Children of the City
3 " Carnegie survived and triumphed in an environment rife with cronyism and corruption. Much of the capital invested in his iron and steel companies was derived from business activities that might be today, but were not at the time, regarded as immoral "
4 " The baby carriage is the sorriest joke in Europe today, for you never see a baby in one. . . . Instead they are filled with pots and pans and tools, and all the impediments of nomads. "
― David Nasaw , The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War
5 " The one thing he did die a martyr to was his own conscience. He wanted to do the right thing because it was his idea of the thing to do, and for that—and that alone—he died. This is the satisfaction which you and I will always have. "
― David Nasaw , The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
6 " Lindbergh was horrified. “The English,” he wrote in his diary, “are in no shape for war. They do not realize what they are confronted with. They have always before had a fleet between themselves and their enemy, and they can’t realize the change aviation has made. I am afraid this is the beginning of the end of England as a great power.”38 "
7 " Lindbergh did as he was asked, wrote the report, and presented in it the most frightening scenario imaginable: “For the first time in history a nation has the power either to save or to ruin the great cities of Europe. Germany has such a preponderance of war planes that she can bomb any city in Europe with comparatively little resistance. England and France are far too weak in the air to protect themselves. "
8 " I suggest that our statesmen read something of modern history before going all out for saving the world. . . . With nations as with individuals, the ALLY YOU HAVE TO BUY WILL NOT STAY BOUGHT. "
9 " Roosevelt knew better than to suggest that Chamberlain criticize or call into question “the present German policy of racial persecution.” All he asked was that he try to negotiate an agreement that would permit Jewish refugees who wanted to leave Germany “to take with them a reasonable percentage of their property. "
10 " He had demonstrated decisively, over the course of a halfcentury, that “by using money like a heavy club,” an individual could, with the mass media as a loudspeaker, make his voice heard in every corner of the nation. "
― David Nasaw , The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
11 " What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground. . . . I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world. So the world may know all. . . . May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened . . . in the twentieth century. . . . We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us. "
12 " you should wire him correct information "
13 " been raised rather successfully "
14 " People are not embracing Communism as Communism, but they are discontented, insecure and unsettled and they embrace anything that looks like it might be better than what they have to endure. . . . It is very easy for anybody who has a job and is getting along all right to cry for democracy . . . but if you cannot feed your children and you do not know where the next meal is coming from, nobody knows what kind of freak you will follow.”13 "
15 " 1935, “even with today’s keen competition from the Huey Longs and Father Coughlins, [Hearst] remains the outstanding demagogue of America. "
16 " The boycotts against Hearst’s newspapers were soon expanded to include his newsreels. At Williams College, then at Amherst, then elsewhere, students booed the Hearst newsreels—at Amherst, they drowned them out with cries of “We Want Popeye! We Want Popeye!”—and picketed the theaters that carried them, forcing theater owners to protect themselves by removing the name Hearst from the titles. "
17 " Although he was less successful in turning back the New Deal than he had been in promoting the progressive agenda that preceded and prepared the nation for it, he set the terms for the counter-progressive ideological assault that would enter—and, at times, dominate—the nation’s political discourse from the mid-1930s onward. "
18 " On April 29, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, whom Roosevelt had asked to answer Kennedy’s four-page letter, assembled his chief advisers for a 10:15 meeting. “Now, the reason I have got you fellows in here, this is extra confidential. I got one of these typical Joe Kennedy letters to the President on gold. . . . It is one of these typical asinine Joe Kennedy letters.” Morgenthau was opposed to Kennedy’s recommendation that the British be pressured to sell their securities to fund the war effort, because he feared that dumping those securities on the market would result in a dramatic fall of American stock prices. "
19 " Professionally, Hearst is a form of poison. Politically, he has degenerated into a form of suicide. Whoever ties up with him begins to smell lilies and attract the undertaker. "
20 " This was precisely what Kennedy expected and feared Churchill was going to say. The newly installed prime minister intended to push the British to fight on until the Americans had no choice but to enter the war or watch from the sidelines as Great Britain was conquered. "
