Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed. The fantastically crowded nine months of 1945 taught me that a President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt I could let up for a single moment.
Two principles we should always have ready — that there is nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not to lead events, but to follow them.
A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.
The powers that be not only try to control events, but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.
As we watch the world today, sometimes it seems that we're at the mercy of events instead of shaping events. And a strong America's essential to shape events, and a strong America, by the way, depends on a strong military.
As soon as we started playing sports arenas, we thought how great it would be if we could instead play to 25,000 people in our own way - a way we can control it so there's not all kinds of company branding around the show - and do it in a way that celebrates the community.
The faculty of art is to change events; the faculty of science is to foresee them. The phenomena with which we deal are controlled by art; they are predicted by science.
Within what gifts you are given you can change certain events in your life and some people choose not to do that.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
