I always tell the truth, so I don’t need a good memory to remember what I said)—in
He repeated his plea that they be fair and open-minded, open to reason and compromise, and praised them for being so reasonable and open-minded thus far—which of course made it harder for them to act...
But this belief demonstrated only that Lyndon Johnson simply had not grasped that there was another world, a world in which Douglas and Lehman were not crazies but heroes, in which principles mattered...
And he worked himself, worked himself. He had made up his mind to be President, and he was demonic in his drive.
Few emotions are more ephemeral in the political world than gratitude: appreciation for past favors. Far less ephemeral, however, is hope: the hope of future favors. Far less ephemeral is fear, the fe...
The Founders’ armor had resisted every attempt by others to force them open; the Senate had been designed as the firm body; it had become too firm—too firm to allow the reforms the Republic needed. Ne...
With a note of sadness, Wicker wrote in 1983 that the reverence, the childlike dependence, the willingness to follow where the President leads, the trust, are long gone—gone, surely, with Watergate, b...
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 gov...
One of the wise, practical people around the table urged Johnson not to press for civil rights in his first speech, because there was no chance of passage, and a President shouldn’t waste his power on...
Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself].
If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? (Robert Moses)
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 powe...
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 neces...
Time would never cure it. Almost half a century later, when she was the only one of the nine Kennedy siblings still living, the author would ask Jean Kennedy Smith about her brother Bobby and his depr...
The rivers rose, and, when they receded, sucked more of the fertile soil back down with them, to run down the Pedernales to the Colorado, down the Colorado to the Gulf. And
It was as a result of his courage that two white men were on trial for killing a Negro, a trial in which, whatever the result, there is a kind of majesty. And we owe that sight to Mose Wright, who was...
In later decades, the role of the Vice President would be gradually and substantially enlarged—at the discretion of the President—but at the time of the 1960 election, that was where the office stood....
I begrudge making a career out of clothes, but Lyndon likes bright colors and dramatic styles that do the most for one’s figure, and I try to please him, she was to say. I’ve really tried to learn the...
He won that election in the byways, Bill Deason says. Ava Cox says: That’s what made Lyndon Johnson be elected the first time.… He told them: ‘I know what you people are up against. Because I’m one of...
Hamlet: He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.