David E. Hoffman famous quotes

I see in [George H. W.] Bush a striving to be Reagan-like in the sense of having a big vision, and eschewing small details.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Vision #Details #George H W Bush

When you look back at the fight against Communism, one thing that is striking is the degree to which we [the United States] were carried on by our own values. One of the real challenges of the new era is going to be to maintain those values and not adopt those of our adversaries.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Real #Fighting #Challenges

Today, we've got what seems to me to be binary-choice politics: black and white, ones and zeros, either you are with me or against me. How did we get here?
-- David E. Hoffman

#Black And White #Choices #Today

Presidents make history but are also a product of it. And there are two kinds: transforming and transactional. Reagan was a transforming president. He made history.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Two #President #Kind

I think his [Reagan's] policy toward the Soviet Union was more risky than most people realize, and it was risky because of the paranoia and fear among the isolated old guard in Moscow.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Thinking #People #Moscow

He [Reagan] was who he was, and it was not complicated. You didn't get a different person in an interview.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Different #Interviews #Complicated

I think words were Reagan's greatest weapon - and more powerful than the Strategic Defense Initiative, which did not come to fruition in his lifetime.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Powerful #Thinking #Defense

I do not think he [Reagan] put names and faces together but for a small group of people. There were a few, perhaps half a dozen reporters, that Reagan recognized, including my colleague Lou Cannon, and some from television and the wire services. The rest of us were faces.
-- David E. Hoffman

#Thinking #Names #People

My goal was to show the history of the end of the Cold War through both sides - the U.S. side and the Soviet side. I really felt that especially the Soviet side of the story hadn't been well told because we didn't know.
-- David E. Hoffman

#War #Goal #Stories

Of what use is a dream if not a blueprint for courageous action.

Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

... The meeting is called by the U.S. to give their vision of the interim Iraqi authority. It will be a one-day meeting. And the U.S. will present its vision, and there will be a statement after the meeting.

Movements of people create change - not just any one person or organization, but when lots of people are in motion around a shared vision.

Once you get the right image the details aren't that important.

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

May you find INSPIRATION in the big picture, but may you find LOVE in the details.

For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.