Amity Shlaes
Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.Collection: Community
Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with.Collection: Done
Coolidge's stat was so low; he's ranked in the bottom half of presidents. What I found when I encountered this man was the leader I might like to see today.Collection: Men
With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.Collection: Children
Right now we're concerned about budget. Right now we're concerned about the prospect of interest rate rise. We're concerned about government corruption, government handing out deals to specific groups. Coolidge fixed a problem like that. He came into a rough time and he, and Harding before him, fixed that by budgeting.Collection: Government
Coolidge liked the dignity of the presidency. He didn't get on the phone easily. It's possible that he banished the phone from his desk. He was known to use it from time to time. The person who was hilarious with the phone was Hoover. He was a real engineer. He made a closed circuit phone where he could call the important people and they could call him, a government hotline, but it was closed. He shut out the possibility of input from people he didn't expect to get input from.Collection: Real
Fame is worth less than service.Collection: Fame
Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.Collection: Cutting
I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.Collection: Father
Coolidge and his treasury secretary Mellon loved new technology. Like JFK, C.C. divined that a new technology could lift the nation out of its doldrums; the only difference was that JFK's new technology was space travel, and Coolidge's travel by airplane.Collection: Airplane
The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.Collection: Lucky
Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.Collection: Cutting
In a way, Calvin Coolidge is better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.Collection: Cutting
Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.Collection: Book
Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents - Nixon, Ike, and Reagan - you see them failing on this score.Collection: Cutting
Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.Collection: Government
Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.Collection: Law
Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.Collection: Government