About the Man

“If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.”

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was a private man, a quiet individual who led the country through a time of heightened prosperity – the Roaring 20′s. A shy man who spoke little, when confronted by a dinner guest at the White House who said she had made a bet that she would be able to get him to speak more than two words, his responded with “You lose.” History, however, has not been so kind to “Silent Cal.”

Coolidge rarely made speeches and he told reporters “I don’t recall any candidate for President that injured himself by not talking.” After finishing off Harding’s term, America seemed perfectly content to “Keep Cool with Coolidge.” After all, the economy was booming like never before. But there is little history to back the Coolidge critics who blame his administration for the Great Depression. Evidence or not, it’s likely that Coolidge takes the fall merely because he preceded one of the worst times of crisis in our history. When times are great, like they were in the Roaring 20′s, there isn’t much to be done… and that’s exactly what Coolidge did.

“Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity. With such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task.” – columnist Walter Lippman

When Coolidge died in 1933 at age 60, during the height of the depression, there was little mourning for the man who apparently never saw the fallout coming.

Coolidge had another great quote- “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistance and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

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