Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself]. - Robert A. Caro

In democratic America, supposedly, ultimate power rests in the voters, and the man for whom the majority of them cast their votes is the repository of that power. But Wagner knew better. The spectators may have thought he had a choice in dealing with Moses. He knew that he did not. Why, when Moses pushed the appointment blank across his desk, did the Mayor say not a word? Possibly because there was nothing to say. Power had spoken.

Congress has a deep, vested interest in its own inefficiency.

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.