Robert A. Caro Quotes

This man who in the pursuit of his aims could be so utterly ruthless — who would let nothing stand in his way; who, in the pursuit, deceived, and betrayed and cheated — would be deceiving and betraying and cheating on behalf of something other than himself: specifically, on behalf of the sixteen million Americans whose skins were dark. All through Lyndon Johnson’s political life — as

fork and embarrassing him. And there was another dinner in Paris. Johnson decided, at the last minute, not to go. And Busby, who did go, recalled that a member of the French Senate came up to him and asked where Johnson was, and Busby answered, He couldn’t come tonight. And the French senator said, Oh I was so looking

What convinces is conviction. You simply have to believe in the argument you are advancing; if you don’t, you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there.

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.

Johnson’s voting record — a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day — was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation — any civil rights legislation. In Senate and House alike, his record was an unbroken one of votes against every civil rights bill that had ever come to a vote: against voting rights bills; against bills that would have struck at job discrimination and at segregation in other areas of American life; even against bills that would have protected blacks from lynching.

that quality in me. And I know it wasn’t only logic that made me think: I’m never going to write about a crucial election, a pivotal moment in my subject’s life, and say that no one’s ever going to know if it was really stolen or not until I’ve done everything I can think of to find out if it was stolen or not.

Emerging from the caucus, Johnson told reporters that he had no plans to release his delegates; “My name will stay as long as the American people are interested.

That was why I resolved to write my first drafts in longhand, slowest of the various means of committing thoughts to paper, before I started doing later drafts on the typewriter; that is why I still do my first few drafts in longhand today;

On June 28, Werner submitted his final report on Case S.I.-19267-F, showing tax deficiencies of $1,099,944 and a penalty of $549,972. But even this was to be scaled down. After a series of further conferences between IRS officials and Wirtz, Brown & Root was ultimately required to pay a total of only $372,000. There were of course no fraud indictments, no trial, no publicity. Franklin Roosevelt had already done so much to advance Lyndon Johnson’s career. In this instance, it may be he who saved it.

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 had been determined not to join his staff. The moment the words were out of Rowe’s mouth, Johnson straightened up, and his tone changed instantly from one of pleading to one of cold command. “Just remember,” he said. “I make the decisions. You don’t.

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.

A handshake, as delivered by Lyndon Johnson, could be as effective as a hug.

"People who sneer at a half a loaf of bread have never been hungry." George Reedy

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)

THE 1934 MAVERICK CAMPAIGN also marked Lyndon Johnson’s first involvement with one of the more pragmatic aspects of politics. Awakening early one morning a day or two before the election, in the big room in San Antonio’s Plaza Hotel that he shared with Johnson, L. E. Jones experienced an awakening of another sort. Johnson was sitting at a table in the center of the room — and on the table were stacks of five-dollar bills. “That big table was just covered with money — more money than I had ever seen,” Jones says. Jones never learned who had given the cash to Johnson — so secretive was his boss that he had not even known Johnson had it — but he saw what Johnson did with it. Mexican-American men would come into the room, one at a time. Each would tell Johnson a number — some, unable to speak English, would indicate the number by holding up fingers — and Johnson would count out that number of five-dollar bills, and hand them to him. “It was five dollars a vote,” Jones realized. “Lyndon was checking each name against lists someone had furnished him with. These Latin people would come in, and show how many eligible voters they had in the family, and Lyndon would pay them five dollars a vote.