H.W. Brands

"There was so much – so many tests and tasks, so many tiny referenda."

30 Quotes

"There was so much – so many tests and tasks, so many tiny referenda."

H.W. Brands

"The very lack of explicit pressure was itself a compelling force, for it created a world in which the expectation of success was simply there, a fact of life as basic as breakfast."

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"I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers."

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"Gold, or at least the prospect of it, saved him, then killed him."

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"He lived in terror of, well, becoming ordinary."

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"The sight of big ships, of the many new uniforms, at once serious and cool, left Bush with an overall sense of the navy's power and camaraderie and purpose."

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"His notes to the outside world offered a window on an active, sympathetic, eclectic mind."

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"He has not shown the special interest in reading that we should like to see but he likes shop work. George H. W. Bush's parents on his Andover application"

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"He forced himself into good spirits."

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"Fatigue could be the dealmaker's friend."

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"Diplomacy was a long game."

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"He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view."

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"When he came in first, he was happy to find all sorts of meaning in the results."

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"Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H. W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I."

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"Bushes may not be eloquent explaining emotion, but George HW Bush's mother knew enough to be in position with her children were ready to talk. She waited up not just to ensure safety but to make the most of the moment of excited emotions. The next morning, they would congeal into polite, one-word answers."

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"He was a product of a culture where it was generally counterproductive to hold grudges."

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"His charm was not electric, but it was enveloping."

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"Accustomed to motion, he was forced to be still."

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"Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else."