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fd99536
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But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.
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power
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Robert A. Caro |
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e35cdd4
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If you can't come into a room and tell right away who is for you and who is against you, you have no business in politics.
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Robert A. Caro |
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bd618a3
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President Kennedy's eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson's hammer blows are designed to make men act.
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politics
lbj
lyndon-b-johnson
kennedy
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Robert A. Caro |
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25597ff
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We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation.
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Robert A. Caro |
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d94753c
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Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately.
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politics
lbj
lyndon-b-johnson
political-correctness
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Robert A. Caro |
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3ae98f4
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Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will";"
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Robert A. Caro |
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a117f09
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Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe.
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Robert A. Caro |
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afcd764
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The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you," he said. "The most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say."
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negotiation
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Robert A. Caro |
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dac0575
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if one characteristic of Lyndon Johnson was a boundless ambition, another was a willingness, on behalf of that ambition, to make efforts that were also without bounds.
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perseverance
work-ethic
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Robert A. Caro |
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0312632
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I will not deny that there are men in the district better qualified than I to go to Congress, but, gentlemen, these men are not in the race.
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Robert A. Caro |
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cee1d5c
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A handshake, as delivered by Lyndon Johnson, could be as effective as a hug.
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undivided-attention
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Robert A. Caro |
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af5637b
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He not only had the gift of "reading" men and women, of seeing into their hearts, he also had the gift of putting himself in their place, of not just seeing what they felt but of feeling what they felt, almost as if what had happened to them had happened to him, too."
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motivation
mentoring
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Robert A. Caro |
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55b3c27
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If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? (Robert Moses)
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Robert A. Caro |
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73a2572
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When Silent Cal Coolidge noted that "You don't have to explain something you haven't said,"
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Robert A. Caro |
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e0e4537
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And he worked himself, worked himself. He had made up his mind to be President, and he was demonic in his drive.
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Robert A. Caro |
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26b99ba
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If you do everything, you'll win,
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Robert A. Caro |
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f176982
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Until the end of his life, whenever the subject of the vast growth of the LBJ Company and associated business enterprises was raised, Lyndon Johnson would emphasize that he owned none of it ("All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson.... I don't have any interest in government-regulated industries of any kind and never have had")."
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Robert A. Caro |
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71f637d
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People who sneer at a half a loaf of bread have never been hungry." George Reedy"
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leadership
dependence
humility
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Robert A. Caro |
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9ee0ec0
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He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those whom social justice had so long been denied. The restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity. The redeemer of the promises made by them to America. "It is time to write it in the books of law." By the time Lyndon Johnson left offic..
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politics
lyndon-b-johnson
legislation
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Robert A. Caro |
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4faa525
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It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. (...) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow's ar..
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politics
lbj
lyndon-b-johnson
style-substance
kennedy
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Robert A. Caro |
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98b8223
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Are you afraid?" an interviewer asked him after the bombing, and there was a pause, and then Martin Luther King said, very firmly, "No, I'm not. My attitude is that this is a great cause, a great issue that we're confronted with, and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important. It is the triumph of a cause that I am concerned about, and I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must..
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Robert A. Caro |
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f824a1a
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Only that when men found themselves at the mercy of forces too big for them to fight alone, government--their government--help them fight. What were the demands for railroad and bank regulation, for government loans, for public-works projects, but an expression of a belief that after men have banded together and formed a government, they have a right, when they are being crushed by conditions over which they have no control, to ask that gov..
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Robert A. Caro |
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0bc8073
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his success in public relations had been due primarily to his masterful utilization of a single public relations technique: identifying himself with a popular cause. This technique was especially advantageous to him because his philosophy--that accomplishment, Getting Things Done, is the only thing that matters, that the end justifies any means, however ruthless--might not be universally popular. By keeping the public eye focused on the cau..
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getting-things-done
public-relations
power
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Robert A. Caro |
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9dc21f1
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It was Abraham Lincoln who struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink of history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting be..
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Robert A. Caro |
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2403a4f
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You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses)
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new-york-city
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Robert A. Caro |
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b46538c
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Decades of the seniority rule had conferred influence in the Senate not on men who broke new ground but on men who were careful not to.
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conservatism
status-quo
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Robert A. Caro |
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a55a489
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Mrs. Roosevelt felt, was the fault of society; "a civilization which does not provide young people with a way to earn a living is pretty poor,"
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Robert A. Caro |
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6ef33b4
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Then Lyndon Johnson came to Jim Rowe's office again, to plead with him, crying real tears as he sat doubled over, his face in his hands. "He wept. 'I'm going to die. You're an old friend. I thought you were my friend and you don't care that I'm going to die. It's just selfish of you, typically selfish.' " Finally Rowe said, " 'Oh, goddamn it, all right' "--and then "as soon as Lyndon got what he wanted," Rowe was forcibly reminded why he ha..
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Robert A. Caro |
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e54163d
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I never conceived of my biographies as merely telling the lives of famous men but rather as a means of illuminating their times and the great forces that shaped their times--particularly political power, since in a democracy political power has so great a role in shaping the lives of the citizens of that democracy.
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Robert A. Caro |
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b5e4900
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Luther King gave people "the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be," Bayard Rustin said--in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield."
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Robert A. Caro |
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015f321
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But when I began researching Robert Moses' expressway-building, and kept reading, in textbook after textbook, some version of the phrase "the human cost of highways" with never a detailed examination of what the "human cost" truly consisted of or of how it stacked up against the benefits of highways, I found myself simply unable to go forward to the next chapter. I felt I just had to try to show--to make readers not only see but understand ..
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Robert A. Caro |
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06f20cb
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From the earliest beginnings of Lyndon Johnson's political life--from his days at college when he had captured control of campus politics--his tactics had consistently revealed a pragmatism and a cynicism that had no discernible limits.
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Robert A. Caro |
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2386546
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When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know you have come into the presence of fire; that it is best not incautiously to touch that man; that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him. --WOODROW WILSON
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Robert A. Caro |
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8f83034
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He talked a lot about girls, too. His brother, Sam Houston Johnson, recalls that more than once, when he visited his brother at San Marcos, Lyndon, coming back into the room naked after a shower, would take his penis in his hand, and say: "Well, I've gotta take ol' Jumbo here and give him some exercise. I wonder who I'll fuck tonight."
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Robert A. Caro |
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8ce33cf
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and he learned that when Johnson gave an assignment, no excuses were accepted. "He used to say, 'I want only can do people.' That was one of his favorite expressions. 'I only want can do people around. I don't want anybody who tells me that they can't do something.' "
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Robert A. Caro |
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1c8f77e
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IS WHERE POWER GOES": the most significant factor in any equation that adds up to political power, Lyndon Johnson had assured his allies, is the individual, not the office; for a man with a gift for acquiring power, whatever office he held would become powerful--because of what he would make out of it. Johnson"
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Robert A. Caro |
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6d03715
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The second most powerful man in the country." All his life Lyndon Johnson had been taking "nothing jobs" and making them into something--something big. And now, no sooner"
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Robert A. Caro |
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2fe133f
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Richard Russell adored his wife. After they had been married for almost forty years, he sent her a note saying, "With a sense of love and gratitude that is overpowering, I can only say God bless you, idol of my heart."
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Robert A. Caro |
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0dc7303
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Sam Rayburn on LBJ's recuperation from his heart attack: "It would kill him if he relaxed."
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relaxation
vocation
job
leisure
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Robert A. Caro |
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1123575
|
Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience-- a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask.
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honoring-parents
humility
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Robert A. Caro |
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3667f4f
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the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, a liberal immigration bill, some seventy different education bills--they're all passed during the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson.
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Robert A. Caro |
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7a2f313
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After a while, the writers of the Allen Room invited me to lunch, which we thereafter ate almost every day in the employees' cafeteria in the library basement. These writers included not just some who were already famous, but some who were, at the time, little better known than I was, like John Demaray, Lucy Komisar, Irene Mahoney and Susan Brownmiller, who was working on Against Our Will and would sit at the desk adjoining mine for the nex..
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Robert A. Caro |
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b14b93a
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At Boston University, where the Reverend King had been studying for his Ph.D., the faculty, impressed by him, had urged him to become an academic, but, although attracted by that prospect, he rejected it in favor of a southern pastorship; "That's where I'm needed," he told his wife, Coretta. He was to discount his role in the Montgomery boycott. "I just happened to be there," he was to say. "There comes a time when time itself is ready for ..
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Robert A. Caro |
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0cb1228
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Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depen..
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Robert A. Caro |