Robert A. Caro Quotes

The Depression is over.” In his December 2, 1930, message to Congress, he said that “the fundamental strength of the economy is unimpaired.

In my defense: while I am aware that there is no Truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.

Science, knowledge, logic and brilliance might be useful tools but they didn’t build highways or civil service systems. Power built highways and civil service systems. Power was what dreams needed, not power in the hand of the dreamer himself necessarily but power put behind the dreamer’s dream by the man who it to put there, power that he termed “executive support”.

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.

MR. CALHOUN. Never, never. MR. WEBSTER. What he means he is very apt to say. MR. CALHOUN. Always, always. MR. WEBSTER. And I honor him for it.

his congressional career almost before it began.

You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon.

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.

I swore then and there,” Lyndon Johnson was to say, “that if I ever had a chance to help those underprivileged kids I was going to do it.” It was at Cotulla, Lyndon Johnson was to say, “that my dream began of an America … where race, religion, language and color didn’t count against you.

"The master of ceremonies was "Cactus" Pryor, "the George Jessel of Texas"; he apologized to the chancellor "because they had been unable to find a way to barbecue sauerkraut." There was a Mexican mariachi band, square dances by the Billyettes, a precision dance team (not all that precise) from Fredericksburg High School and then the German carols sung by cowgirls - the St. Mary's High School choir in full cowgirl regalia: Stetsons, blue skirts, white blouses and red neckerchiefs - under the direction of a nun in head-to-tie black habit. They closed with "Deep in the Heart of Texas" - and that was in German, too. "Die Sterne bei Nacht sind gross und klar / Tief in das Herz von Texas..." After each couplet, the traditional four Texas claps. At the conclusion, a cowboy yell, echoed by the audience. Only after that did the explanation for the grand piano appear: tull, curly-haired Van Cliburn of Fort Worth, whom newspapers had been calling "the pride of Texas" ever since his victory in 1958 in the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The thunderous chords of the young virtuoso's selections from Beethoven, Brahms and other German composers filled the rickety little building."

Don’t you remember what cotton was selling at when Mr. Roosevelt went into office?” he would ask. “Don’t you remember when it was selling at a nickel? “Don’t you remember when it was cheaper to shoot your cattle than to feed them? “Don’t you remember when you couldn’t get a loan, and the banks were going to take your land away? “I’m a farmer like you. I was raised up on a farm. I know what it’s like to be afraid that they’re going to take your land away. And that’s why I’m for Mr. Roosevelt. “What President ever cared about the farmer before Mr. Roosevelt?” he would ask. “Did Hoover care about the farmer? Did Coolidge care about the farmer? The only President who ever cared about the farmer was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was for the poor man. He wanted to give the poor man a chance. He wanted the farmers to have a break. And he gave ’em a break. He gave us a break! He’s the one who did it for us! He’s the one who’s doin’ it for us! And he’s the one who’s goin’ to do it for us! AND I’M BACKIN’ HIM!” The people before him were, many of them, people he had seen for the first time only a few minutes before. But as a result of his brief conversations with them, he could attach to their faces not only names but circumstances of their lives — and, in so doing, could make them feel that their destiny was linked to Roosevelt’s destiny, and to Lyndon Johnson’s.

Of this there was virtually no public awareness, and Lyndon Johnson left the Presidency, and lived out his life, and died, with the American people still ignorant not only of the dimensions of his greed but of its intensity.

When Silent Cal Coolidge noted that “You don’t have to explain something you haven’t said,

for power in its most naked form, for power not to improve the lives of others, but to manipulate and dominate them, to bend them to his will. For the more one learns — from his family, his childhood playmates, his college classmates, his first assistants, his congressional colleagues — about Lyndon Johnson, the more it becomes apparent not only that this hunger was a constant throughout his life but that it was a hunger so fierce and consuming that no consideration of morality or ethics, no cost to himself — or to anyone else — could stand before it.

Senators came to realize that he understood not only their bills but the reasons they had introduced them;