Garry Wills Quotes

One day I’ll get a tattoo for you.” Warmth explodes in my chest, in awe that he would mark himself for me. “You don’t have to.” “I will.” His fingers trace my cheek and chills of pleasure run down my spine. “It’s what I do. Each tattoo represents the only happy memories I’ve had. And you, Rachel, you’re the happiest.

What if there's another fire? You're not going to be there to save me." "I'll always save you." Because I would. I'd move heaven and earth. I'd willingly walk into hell and stay there. I'd give up anything and everything for him.

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

Bullshit. We belong together." Echo sniffed and the sound tore at me. I softened my voice."Look at me, baby. I know you love me. Three nights ago you were willing to offer everything to me. There is no way you can walk away from us.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

God initiates the salvation of man to express the Father's love, not a punitive deflecting of the Father's anger.

I thought loving people was supposed to be easy,” he says quietly. “But it’s the hardest thing I’ve done. I wish I knew how to love you right.” “I’ve told you how to love me. You aren’t willing to love me how I need to be loved.

The advantage of a permanent emergency for the executive is that even trivial things can routinely be accomplished by the crisis presidency. If everything is an emergency, all power is emergency power.

I love you. I always have, always will. I understand the promises you’re talking about and I understand why you can’t make them, but I’m going to make a promise to you. No matter which way this plays out, I promise to love you and do my best to make sure whatever path we go down together or separately will be the one that hurts you the least.

She pressed her hands against my chest and tried to push me away. "I can't think straight when you 're this close." I backed her up against the wall. "I don't like the thoughts running through your head. I plan on staying here until you look me in the eye and tell me you 're mine." "This isn't going to work. It never would have." "Bullshit. We belong together." Echo sniffed and the sound tore at me. I softened my voice. "Look at me, baby. I know you love me. Three nights ago you were willing to offer everything to me. There is no way you can walk away from us." "God Noah..." Her voice broke. "I'm a mess." A mess? "You 're beautiful." "I'm a mental mess. In two months you 're going to face some judge and convince him that you are the best person to raise your brothers. I'm a liability." "Not true. My brothers will love you and you 'll love them. You are not a liability." "But how will the judge see me? Are you really willing too take that risk? [...] What happens if the judge find out about me? What if he discovers what a mess you 're dating?" Breathing became a painful chore. Her lips turned down while her warm fingers caressed my cheek. That touch typically brought me to knees, but now it cut me open. "Did you know that when you stop being stubborn and accept i may be right on something, your eyes widen a little and you tilt your head to the side?" she asked. I forced my head straight and narrowed my eyes. "I love you." She flashed her glorious smile and then it became the saddest smile in the world. "You love your brothers more. I'm okay with that. In fact, it's one of the things i love about you. You were right the other day. I do want to be a part of a family. But i'd never forgive myself if i was the reason you didn't get yours." To my horror, tears pricked my eyes and my throat swelled shut. "No, you 're not pulling this sacrificial bullshit on me. I love you and you love me and we 're supposed to be together." Echo pressed her body to mine and her fingers clung to my hair. Water glistened in her eyes. "I love you enough to never make you choose." She pushed off her toes toward me, guiding my head down, and gently kissed my lips. No. This wouldn't be goudbye. I'd fill her up and make her realize she'd always be empty without me. I made Echo mine. My hands claimed her hair, her back. My lips claimed her mouth, her tongue. Her body shook against mine and i tasted salty wetness on her skin. She forced her lips away and i latched tighter to her. "No, baby, no," i whispered into her hair. She pushed her palms against my chest, then became a blur as she ran past. "I'm sorry.

Lay Catholics and priests alike expected that Vatican II and the deliberations of a fifty-eight-member commission appointed to study the birth control issue would result in an end to the ban on artificial contraception. Instead, Pope Paul VI, negating the majority report of his own commission, issued the 1968 Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church's birth control prohibitions. Garry Wills asserts that Humanae Vitae was based on a minority report from the commission that emphasized the need for continuity in Church teachings. The teachings could not change because it had been the teaching for so long, and, if it changed, the Church would have to acknowledge that it had been in error about the teaching, and how would they explain what had happened to all the souls supposedly in hell for using artificial birth control?

an aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. (“First-generation millionaires,” Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, “give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.”)

Inefficiency is to be our safeguard against despotism.

Nothing stuns others more than the quiet eruption of a normally quiet man.

Just a shower. If you want me to stay on the opposite side, I will. I won’t kiss. I won’t touch.” Echo flashes that siren smile. “What if I want to kiss you?” “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?

Arthur Schlesinger admits that JFK "succumbed to the fake omniscience of insiders". Prolonged immersion in the self-contained, self-justifying world of clandestinity and deception erodes the reality principle.

You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. —GILBERT CHESTERTON

In his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: Words That Remade America, Garry Wills (2006) argues that it was Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address who transformed America’s individualism-oriented Constitution, with all its checks and balances, into a vision of the common good. Lincoln is the de facto godfather of the common good.

Today, when we talk about the two atomic bombs* the United States dropped on Japan, we tend to do so in the context of the morality of dropping them. The truth is, the decision makers almost certainly didn’t have the range of options we often assume (or wish) they had. The idea that President Truman could have done something other than use the atomic bomb on Japan is probably a little out of step with the political realities of the time.* As the historian Garry Wills wrote in his book Bomb Power: “If it became known that the United States had a knockout weapon it did not use, the families of any Americans killed after the development of the bomb would be furious. The public, the press, and Congress would turn on the President and his advisors. There would have been a cry to impeach President Truman and court-martial General Groves. The administration would be convicted of spending billions of dollars and draining massive amounts of brain power and manpower from other war projects and all for nothing.

Unfettered inquisitiveness, it is clear, teaches better than do intimidating assignments.

We were willing to die for each other, and if that wasn’t love, I didn’t know what love was.

Other humans can die a grisly death, as Jesus did. They cannot be born, as he was, as God incarnate.

Groves, with his eye for sizing up people who could get things done, saw the deep ambition Oppenheimer covered with his surface charm.

My patience finally snapped. “This is ridiculous.” I swept her up and swung her over my shoulder, her bare feet dangling in front of me. Tinkling laughter filled the room. “What are you doing?” I tossed her onto the bed. Her fire-red hair sprawled over the pillow. My siren smiled up at me. “Getting comfortable,” I said. Echo blinked and raw hunger replaced the laughter that danced in her eyes moments before. Her delicate fingers glided up my arm, exciting every cell. “You don’t look very comfortable.” The sultry tone caused something deep within me to stir. I swallowed, attempting to push away the unexpected flutter of nerves in my stomach. “Echo …” My heart swelled, causing my chest to ache and breathing to become nearly impossible. Paralyzed by her beauty, I hovered over her. She was no nymph, but a goddess. Her hands continued their burning climb up my arm and onto my chest. Bold moves for her. Echo’s breasts rose and fell at a faster rate. “I want to stay with you tonight.” I sucked in a breath as her fingers trailed down the indentations of my chest muscles and willed her to continue as they made their slow descent. Caressing the warm redness forming on her cheek, I sank onto the bed beside her. “Are you sure?” “Yes.”

assessing Ronald Reagan. There are so many basic questions that even his friends cannot quite figure out, such as (to start with the most basic one): Was he smart? From the brilliant-versus-clueless question flows even more complex ones. Was he a visionary who clung to a few verities, or an amiable dunce who floated obliviously above facts and nuances? Was he a stubborn ideological coot or a clever negotiator able to change course when dealing with Congress and the Soviets and movie moguls? Was he a historic figure who stemmed the tide of government expansion and stared down Moscow, or an out-of-touch actor who bloated the deficit and deserves less credit than Gorbachev for ending the cold war? The most solidly reported biography of Reagan so far—indeed, the only solidly reported biography—is by the scrupulously fair newspaperman Lou Cannon, who has covered him since the 1960s. Edmund Morris, who with great literary flair captured the life of Theodore Roosevelt, was given the access to write an authorized biography, but he became flummoxed by the topic; he took an erratic swing by producing Dutch, a semifictionalized ruminative bio-memoir, thus fouling off his precious opportunity. Both Garry Wills in his elegant 1987 sociobiography, Reagan’s America, and Dinesh D’Souza in his 1997 delicate drypoint, Ronald Reagan, do a good job of analyzing why he was able to make such a successful connection with the American people.

...that the Bomb altered our subsequent history down to its deepest constitutional roots. It redefined the presidency, as in all respects America's "Commander in Chief" (a term that took on a new and unconstitutional meaning in this period). It fostered an anxiety of continuing crisis, so that society was pervasively militarized. It redefined the government as a National Security State, with an apparatus of secrecy and executive control. It redefined Congress, as an executor of the executive. And it redefined the Supreme Court, as a follower of the follower of the executive. Only one part of the government had the supreme power, the Bomb, and all else must defer to it, for the good of the nation, for the good of the world, for the custody of the future, in a world of perpetual emergency superseding ordinary constitutional restrictions.

An authentic person is one who is an unobstructed channel between what they 'Will', what they do, and how they live: one who listens to an inner voice and then works, lives, and plays accordingly.

Upon watching a young child do, explore, or create something, you are witnessing an unconditioned essential spirit willing itself into direct action towards a result.

Americans are driven by many forces, and chief among those forces—and thus a formative element in the country’s soul—is the “pursuit of happiness” of which Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. When he composed those words in his rented second-floor quarters at Seventh and Market in Philadelphia in late June, 1776, Jefferson was not thinking about happiness in only the sense of good cheer. He and his colleagues were contemplating something more comprehensive—more revolutionary. Garry Wills’s classic 1978 book on the Declaration, Inventing America, put it well: “When Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness,” Wills wrote, “he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant public happiness which is measurable; which is, indeed, the test and justification of any government.

Believe your attractions, listen to your intuitions, and feel the power of your will.

The tapes are the real man—mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down. Murray Kempton said he wanted to leave no fingerprints, but he went about it in such a way as to leave his fingerprints all over his story. Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero. He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.

The three horsemen of Fate: Intuition, Attraction, and what one 'Wills'.

How God works this out is another mystery, but I have found this line of thought helpful. God does not usurp our responsibility because He doesn’t work contrary to our nature, nor force our wills. As we decide, He works within our wills and in harmony with our nature to bring about His determined end. If God did force us, we would not be responsible.

interlocutor—a

“She cries.” Ashley’s high-pitched voice cut through the silence as if she were dispensing juicy country-club gossip. “All the time. She really misses Aires.” Both my father and I turned our heads to look at the blond bimbo. I willed her to continue while my father, I’m sure, willed her to shut up. God listened to me for once. Ashley went on, “We all miss him. It’s so sad that the baby will never know him.” And once again, welcome to the Ashley show, sponsored by Ashley and my father’s money.

You are endowed with a peculiar gift, a wild card really, capable of thumping your history, while creating your future - called Free Will.

Pigpen and Dust have already told me, multiple times, that lots of brothers are ready and willing to buy me as many beers as I can drink tonight, tomorrow night, forever.

What you're willing to give tells you who you are. Not what you are willing to bargain for, or willing to be paid for - but what it is you are willing to give.

Learning to listen to your 'will' and what it loves - and then translating what you hear into a practical formula for action - is the only path to authenticity.

Talmud, the Halakha, the Qur’an, the Bible, the (Sikh) Granth Sahib—as “true and accurate in all particulars.”4 How could a dying religious attitude, scheduled for elimination by the end of the twentieth century—already, as it were, being measured for its coffin—dance away from the dirge with renewed vitality? More pointedly, how could this escape

If one settles, instead, for a substitute past, an illusion of it, then that fragile construct must be protected from the challenge of complex or contradictory evidence, from any test of evidence at all. That explains Americans' extraordinary tacit bargain with each other not to challenge Reagan's version of the past. The power of his appeal is the great joint confession that we cannot live with our real past, that we not only prefer but need a substitute.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Historian Garry Wills later captured the 1950s liberal Catholic’s affinity for “steel and glass fish-shaped churches, and driftwood-swirl Madonnas, and wrought-iron abstract tracery for the stations of the cross (artily photographed in Jubilee).”31

[T]he American fanatic has always suffered moral disorientation at the mere thought of anyone 'getting something for nothing'.

Th fight over the [twelfth] amendment also confirms what Henry Adams treated as the "comedy" of Jefferson in power--that his efforts, and those of his followers, continually worked against their declared object. Jefferson came saying that he would reduce the power of the executive and the centralizing nationalism of the Federalists. But the Twelfth Admendment, by subordinating the vice president, increased the power of the president, who was able to run unopposed by anyone in his party once he was nominated, and who was served by the man in second place.

The creation of a "designated" ticket also made it possible for the president to run not as an individual but as a member of a team chosen for geographical spread and numerical inclusiveness. This can be seen as helping build national unity, but it undercut states' rights, as the small states argued in the debate over the amendment. (Delaware refused to ratify the amendment on just those grounds.) Even the reduction of the chances for a tie vote in the Electoral College took power away from the small states, since they had an equal vote in cases of a tie.

...one of the main lessons is that people should not be separated into classes of the clean and the unclean, the worthy and the unworthy, the respectable and the unrespectable. … (missing) the point of their union with the Father, whose love is undiscriminating and inclusive, not gradated and excessive.

People are instinctively drawn to Jesus certain that he understands suffering, their particular suffering, that he sees it in their eyes even before they speak. God's chosen are the suffering ones, whose inner luminescence is emphasized by the fragility of its container.

[During Election of 1800] [Jefferson] fanned the talk of armed resistance. In his Pennsylvania Avenue onversation with John Adams, he told the president that any act to block his election 'would probably produce resistance by force and incalculable consequences,' Considering this threat of violence, perhaps we should not be surprised that Adams did not stay in Washington for Jefferson's inauguration. Perhaps that threat was still ringing in his ears. Nor was this an isolated remark of Jefferson's.

Jefferson belonged to that large class if southerners--including the best of them, nen like Washington and Madison--who knew that slavery was evil, but felt they could not cut back in the evil without cutting the ground out from under them. They knew, as well, that they would lose their influence over other southerners if they went against the system off which they lived.

Louisiana looked like a bonanza to people anxious to unload their slaves at high prices--and it looked that way precisely because Jefferson excluded slave importations from abroad.

It was the pride and ostentation of power the Jesus rebuked in spiritual leaders.

He must have been like a thin brown skeleton autumn leaf dancing eternally before the wind; but in truth it was he that was the wind.

The idea of government separate from religion was floating around during the Enlightenment. John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and the greats of the day discussed it. But while other ideas in political science had real-world antecedents on which the founders could rely, there was no example of a truly secular government. No other nation had sought to protect the ability of its citizens to think freely by separating the government from religion and religion from the government. Until the theory was put into practice, true freedom of thought and even freedom of religion could not have existed. The United States realized those concepts because it embarked “upon a great and noble experiment…hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent—that of total separation of Church and State,” according to President John Tyler.46 America was the first nation to try this experiment; it invented the separation of state and church. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Garry Wills put it nicely: That [separation], more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth, setting new tasks for religion, offering it new opportunities. Everything else in our Constitution—separation of powers, balanced government, bicameralism, federalism—had been anticipated both in theory and practice…. But we invented nothing, except disestablishment. No other government in history had launched itself without the help of officially recognized gods and their state-connected ministers.47 Americans should celebrate this “great American principle of eternal separation.”48 It’s ours. It’s an American original. We ought to be proud of that contribution to the world, not bury it under myths. The founders’ private religious beliefs are far less important to the Judeo-Christian question than their views on separating state and church and the actions they took to divorce those two institutions. They were as close to consensus on separating the two as they were on any subject. In the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published the same year that America declared independence, historian Edward Gibbon wrote that “the various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.”49 Most of the founders agreed with Gibbon and recognized that religion can be exploited for political gain and that religion, when it has civil power, is often deadly. These beliefs were common among the founders, but not universal. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, believed that “the Christian religion should be preferred to all others” and that “every family in the United States [should] be furnished at public expense…with a copy of an American edition of the BIBLE.”50 However, in spite of, or likely because of, their divergent religious beliefs and backgrounds, the founders thought that separation made sense.

He walks through social barriers and taboos as if they were cobwebs.

Words had to complete the work of the guns.

Garry Wills’s classic 1978 book on the Declaration, Inventing America, put it well: “When Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness,” Wills wrote, “he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant public happiness which is measurable; which is, indeed, the test and justification of any government.

Like many Russians, I was troubled by the little-known Putin’s KGB background and his sudden rise to power by overseeing the brutal 1999 war to pacify the Russian region of Chechnya. But along with my countrymen, at the start I was grudgingly willing to give Putin a chance. Yeltsin had badly tarnished his democratic credentials during his 1996 reelection by using the powers of the presidency to influence the outcome, and I confess that I was one of those who thought at the time that sacrificing some of the integrity of the democratic process was the lesser evil if it was required to keep the hated Communists from regaining power. Such trade-offs are nearly always a mistake, and it was in this case, as it paved the way for a more ruthless individual to exploit the weakened system.

What is the kind of religion Jesus opposed? Any religion that is proud of its virtue, like the boastful Pharisee. Any that is self-righteous, quick to judge and condemn, ready to impose burdens rather than share or lift them. Any that exalts its own officers, proud of its trappings, building expensive monuments to itself. Any that neglects the poor and cultivates the rich, any that scorns outcasts and flatters the rulers of this world. If that sounds like just about every form of religion we know, then we can see how far off from religion Jesus stood.

Love is the test. In the gospel of Jesus, love is everything.