To be quite honest, numbers don't tell you everything because audience reactions differ. Some of the biggest films at the box office are not necessarily films that everyone has loved, they just opened to a good response.
The American story has never been about things coming easy. It has been about rising to the moment when the moment is hard. About rejecting panicked division for purposeful unity. About seeing a mountaintop from the deepest valley. That is why we remember that some of the most famous words ever spoken by an American came from a president who took office in a time of turmoil: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
I think that Donald Trump is coming to this office with fewer set hard-and-fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with.
Who you are, what you are, does not change after you occupy the oval office. All it does is magnify who you are. All it does is shine a spotlight on who you are.
A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.
You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity. O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
The superior man does not mind being in office; all he minds about is whether he has qualities that entitle him to office. He does not mind failing to get recognition; he is too busy doing the things that entitle him to recognition.
Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first...The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
There's no doubt that I'm a better president now than when I first took office. This is not a job where there's a manual, and over time you get a better sense of what's important, what's not, how to see around corners and anticipate problems, as opposed to just managing problems once they've arrived.
... No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.