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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Jon Meacham Quotes

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

– Jon Meacham

Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them – take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

– Jon Meacham

In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.

– Jon Meacham

I am a huge admirer of Franklin Roosevelt’s, and I believe social security has done untold good in alleviating the once-widespread issue of poverty among the elderly. FDR believed in the greatness and generosity of Americans – but he was also a cold-blooded politician.

– Jon Meacham

The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.

– Jon Meacham

It is true that traditional Christianity is losing some of its appeal among Americans, but that is a religious, not political, matter. It is worth remembering that the Jeffersonian ‘wall of separation’ between church and state has always been intended to protect the church from the state as much as the state from the church.

– Jon Meacham

A lot of people, including business leaders, think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game, but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.

– Jon Meacham

Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.

– Jon Meacham

I’ve been accused of being old before my time more than once. It’s true that I’ve always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents – and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

– Jon Meacham

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We’ll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

– Jon Meacham

Attacks on a politician’s identity – questioning Romney’s religion, say, or Obama’s birthplace – tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can’t sell himself.

– Jon Meacham

Extremists often derive their inspiration from literal interpretations of texts that should rightly be read not as Associated Press reports from the ancient world, but as theological and literary enterprises requiring independent intellectual assessment.

– Jon Meacham

The traditional religious right’s failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.

– Jon Meacham

The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.

– Jon Meacham

The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths – of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.

– Jon Meacham

Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.

– Jon Meacham

It’s possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That’s because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.

– Jon Meacham

Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.

– Jon Meacham

I do not believe ‘Newsweek’ is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them, and I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

– Jon Meacham

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

– Jon Meacham

It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail.

– Jon Meacham

Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple – even simplistic – terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.

– Jon Meacham

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing.

– Jon Meacham

Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.

– Jon Meacham

Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms.

– Jon Meacham

If a person is homosexual by nature – that is, if one’s sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one’s identity as gender or skin color – then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.

– Jon Meacham

I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.

– Jon Meacham

I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves.

– Jon Meacham

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

– Jon Meacham

One of the earliest resurrection scenes in the Bible is that of Thomas demanding evidence – he wanted to see, to touch, to prove. Those who question and probe and debate are heirs of the apostles just as much as the most fervent of believers.

– Jon Meacham

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