Nancy Gibbs: In his final remarks to the White House staff, on the day...

Maybe as times get worse we get better. Our pain makes us feel other people's too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway.

Nancy Gibbs

pain practice fear

While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.

Nancy Gibbs

regret justice years

For the truly faithful, no miracle is necessary. For those who doubt, no miracle is sufficient.

Nancy Gibbs

faithful miracle inspirational

[Former chief executives] come away thinking that America needs a strong, functioning presidency to succeed, and they become very protective of that office. Democrats and Republicans alike are willing to put aside their own party's self-interest to preserve the presidency. That's been true over the decades.

Nancy Gibbs

party strong thinking

The challenge was that it was harder to be subtle than strident.

Nancy Gibbs

subtle harder challenges

You must get courageous men, men of strong views and let them debate and argue with each other.

Nancy Gibbs

strong views men

Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.

Nancy Gibbs

illusion live-by knows

Dwight Eisenhower was candid in private, but he was circumspect in public.

Nancy Gibbs

dwight dwight-eisenhower candid

I would like to see every newspaper and every magazine have a network of bureaus all over the world, gathering news.

Nancy Gibbs

news gathering world

For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high.

Nancy Gibbs

religious christian country

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.

Nancy Gibbs

suicide sex school

The one problem with the Internet for journalists who like doing long form is that any story that's going to involve 16 screens on the web page... that's asking a lot of people.

Nancy Gibbs

asking long people

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope... Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own.

Nancy Gibbs

color winning country

Of all ennobling sentiments, patriotism may be the most easily manipulated. On the one hand, it gives powerful expression to what is best in a nation's character: a commitment to principle, a willingness to sacrifice, a devotion to the community by the choice of the individual. But among its toxic fruits are intolerance, belligerence and blind obedience, perhaps because it blooms most luxuriantly during times of war.

Nancy Gibbs

powerful character war

A runner's stride is not perfectly efficient.

Nancy Gibbs

not-perfect stride runners

Americas presidents tend to die young. Maybe it is in the nature of the men who reach such heights, or of the job once they attain it.

Nancy Gibbs

president jobs men

If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.

Nancy Gibbs

powerful humble america

Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

Nancy Gibbs

president identity air

If Heaven is willing to sing to us, it is little to ask that we be ready to listen.

Nancy Gibbs

angel littles heaven

Eisenhower had run the Army; he knew all the ways decision making can go off the rails, and insisted on collective debate precisely to prevent senior officials from freelancing, or putting their departmental interests first. For all the formal machinery, Eisenhower was very literally the commander in chief, making the key decisions himself and monitoring closely how they were carried out. Even years after D-Day, when critics needled him for not being on the front lines with the invading forces, he retorted, “I planned it and took responsibility for it. Did you want me to unload a truck?

Nancy Gibbs

senior responsibility running

In his final remarks to the White House staff, on the day he resigned his office, Nixon applied a version of the lesson to himself. “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.