Robert A. Caro Quotes & Sayings

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. — Robert A. Caro

BECAUSE THIS MONEY came from Texas, the rise of Lyndon Johnson sheds light on the new economic forces that surged out of the Southwest in the middle of the twentieth century, on the immense influence exerted over America's politics, its governmental institutions, its foreign and domestic policies by these forces: the oil and sulphur and gas and defense barons of the Southwest. As the robber barons of the last century looted the nation's earth of its wealth - its coal and coke, its oil and ore, its iron, its forests, the very surface of its earth to provide a footing for the rails of their railroads - and used part of that wealth to ensure that the nation's government would not force them to give more than a pittance of their loot back to the nation's people, so the robber barons of this century have drained the earth of the Southwest of its riches and have used those riches to bend government to their ends. — Robert A. Caro

With Johnson, you never quite knew if he was out to lift your heart or your wallet. Roy Wilkins — Robert A. Caro

Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. "The trouble with the nation's economy," he declared, was simply Prohibition, which "makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency"; the "present economic crisis," he explained, was due to the "withdrawal of billions of dollars from the channels of legitimate trade" by these bootleggers. — Robert A. Caro

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 — Robert A. Caro

He could follow someone's mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

The city governments of the United States are the worst in Christiandom - the most expensive, the most inefficient, and the most corrupt. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine, — Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He began, in his speeches, to ask questions. — Robert A. Caro

People who sneer at a half a loaf of bread have never been hungry. George Reedy — Robert A. Caro

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 — Robert A. Caro

Strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies" - a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching. — Robert A. Caro

Johnson told the doctors that "he enjoyed nothing but whiskey, sunshine and sex." Reedy found the moment "poignant," he was to recall. "Without realizing what he was doing, he had outlined succinctly the tragedy of his life. The only way he could get away from himself was sensation: sun, booze, sex. — Robert A. Caro

The common problem, yours and mine, everyone's/Is not to fancy what were fair in life/Provided it could be - but finding first/What may be and how to make it fair up to our means. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

Humphrey was to say, and now he was planning to continue doing so, to use the chairmanship, in Humphrey's words, "to hang on to [the power] he had wielded as Majority Leader" as a "de facto Majority Leader"; Johnson "had the illusions that he could be in a sense, as Vice President, the Majority Leader." His proposal violated what was to these senators one of the Senate's most sacred precepts - its independence of the executive branch; he was proposing that a member of that branch preside over their meetings. — Robert A. Caro

Rowe was later to hear Johnson recounting the conversation to Richard Russell. "He said, 'Well, you know, Dick, I was really making some progress with Adlai. I took my knife and held it right against him. All of a sudden I felt some steel in my ribs and I looked around and Finnegan had a knife in my ribs.' He laughed, and Russell said, 'Finnegan is a pro,' and that was it. — Robert A. Caro

After he returned from Washington, Johnson came into Rowe's room and said, "I agree with everything you said." Perhaps he did agree - intellectually. But he didn't take the advice. He couldn't. He was beyond listening to warnings, as was demonstrated the next day, when the convention opened. — Robert A. Caro

Senator Harding, who declared in his inaugural address that We seek no part in directing the destinies of the world. — Robert A. Caro

Anyone who held that belief, as Richard Rovere was to explain in The New Yorker, "forgot the wisdom of history, which is that members of the United States Senate almost invariably come to grief when they try to win Presidential nominations for themselves or to manipulate national conventions for any purpose whatsoever. For many reasons - patronage is one, and control of delegations is another - the big men at conventions are governors and municipal leaders. — Robert A. Caro

Abraham Lincoln 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. — Robert A. Caro

Its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members could be dealt with only in bodies and droves. — Robert A. Caro

Charity begins at home. — Robert A. Caro

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 stand up and be counted, and be willing to face the consequences, whatever they are, and if he is filled with fear, he cannot do it. — Robert A. Caro

Russell answered, Well, no - well, it certainly has permitted me to have more hours to work ... but I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had my life to do over again, I would certainly get married. — Robert A. Caro

Johnson was insulated from reality by his hopes and dreams. — Robert A. Caro

While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men - a great reader of men. — Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson. The junior congressman saw two things that no one else saw. The first was a possible connection between two groups that had previously had no link: conservative Texas oilmen and contractors - most notably his financial backer, Herman Brown, of Brown & Root - who needed federal contracts and tax breaks and were willing to spend money, a lot of money, to get them; and the scores of northern, liberal congressmen, running for re-election, who needed money for their campaigns. The second was that he could become that link. — Robert A. Caro

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 otherwise, — Robert A. Caro

Once Lyndon replied that "My doctor says Scotch keeps my arteries open." "They don't have to be that wide open," she said with a smile. — Robert A. Caro

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 fear that in the future, favors may be denied. — Robert A. Caro

If you do everything, you'll win, — Robert A. Caro

Sam Rayburn on LBJ's recuperation from his heart attack: It would kill him if he relaxed. — Robert A. Caro

The air of compromise is rarely appreciated fully by men of principle. C. Vann Woodward — Robert A. Caro

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 far more than they did in the Senate. In addition, Lyndon Johnson had not fully appreciated that it didn't matter what he did for the liberals in Social Security and housing so long as he was not on their side on the "great issue." He should have appreciated this. — Robert A. Caro

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 depression over Jack's death. "When did he come out of that?" she repeated, and then said, "I don't think he ever came out of that. — Robert A. Caro

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 depending on moral and spiritual forces. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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, — Robert A. Caro

The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a "oneness found nowhere else in politics." The symbol was the legendary "Southern Caucus," the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened - meetings that were, White said, "for all the world like reunions of a large and highly individualistic family whose members are nevertheless bound by one bond." In those meetings, the southern position was agreed upon, its tactics mapped, its front made solid. — Robert A. Caro

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 — Robert A. Caro

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 office he had done a lot of writing in those books, had become, above all presidents save Lincoln, the codifier of compassion, the president who wrote mercy and justice in the statute books by which America was governed. — Robert A. Caro

In that August of 1957, however, the cloakroom was often crowded, with senators talking earnestly on sofas and standing in animated little groups, and sometimes the glances between various groups were not comradely at all - sometimes, in fact, they glinted with a barely concealed hostility, and the narrow room simmered with tension, for the main issue before the Senate that summer was civil rights, a proposed law intended to make voting easier for millions of black Americans — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

And he worked himself, worked himself. He had made up his mind to be President, and he was demonic in his drive. — Robert A. Caro

He saw that at its center were Coretta and Yoki, unharmed. And then, having made sure of that, Martin Luther King became very calm, with what Branch calls "the remote calm of a commander." Stepping back out on the porch, he held up his hand for silence. Everything was all right, he told the crowd. "Don't get panicky. Don't do anything panicky. Don't get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what Jesus said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love." The crowd was silent now, as King continued speaking. He himself might die, he said, but that wouldn't matter. "If I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. — Robert A. Caro

That speech (Daniel Webster's) raised the idea of Union above contract or expediency and enshrined it in the American heart. — Robert A. Caro

I, sir, take a different view of the whole matter. I look upon Ohio and South Carolina to be parts of one whole - parts of the same country - and that country is my country. ... I come here not to consider that I will do this for one distinct part of it, and that for another, but ... to legislate for the whole. And finally Webster turned to a higher idea: the idea - in and of itself - of Union, permanent and enduring. — Robert A. Caro

A laconic Texas lawmaker declined to use his considerable influence to intervene in a loud dispute between his colleagues. When asked why not, he said, They're not voting. If they're not voting, they're not passing any laws. If they're not passing any laws, they're not hurting anybody. — Robert A. Caro

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will"; — Robert A. Caro

Her encouragement and reassurance were constant and extravagant. Once, not seeing her at a public function, he demanded, with something of his old snarl, "Where's Lady Bird?" and she replied, "Right behind you, darling. Where I've always been." At a conference at which he became agitated, she slipped him a note. "Don't let anybody upset you. You'll do the right thing. You're a good man. — Robert A. Caro

And, of course, the sentences would often be strung together in stories, many of them set in the Hill Country. They were about drunks, and about preachers - there was one about the preacher who at a rural revival meeting was baptizing converts in a creek near Johnson City and became overenthusiastic. One teenage boy was immersed for quite a long time, and when his head was lifted out of the water, one of the congregation called out from the creek bank, "Do you believe?" The boy said, "I believe," and the preacher promptly put his head under again. Again, when he emerged, someone shouted out, "Do you believe?" and again the boy said, gasping this time, "I believe." Down he went again, and this time, when the preacher lifted his head up, someone shouted, "What do you believe?" "I believe this son of a bitch is trying to drown me," the boy said. — Robert A. Caro

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 art of clothes, because you don't sell for what you're worth unless you look well. — Robert A. Caro

De Tocqueville, after his tour of the United States in 1831, was to comment that "The Senate contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe." De Tocqueville was not the only foreign observer deeply impressed. The Victorian historian Sir Henry Maine said that the Senate was "the only thoroughly successful institution which has been established since the tide of modern democracy began to run." Prime Minister William Gladstone called it "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics. — Robert A. Caro

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. Never had the dam been more firm than during the last decade, the decade since the conservative coalition had learned its strength. During that decade, despite the mandate of three presidential elections, it had stood across and blocked the rising demand for social justice, had stood so solidly that it seemed too strong ever to be breached. In January, 1949, when Lyndon Johnson arrived in it, it was still standing. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

To a staff member who, after talking with a senator, said he "thought" he knew which way the senator was going to vote, he snarled, "What the fuck good is thinking to me? Thinking isn't good enough. Thinking is never good enough. I need to know!" Often, he didn't know. — Robert A. Caro

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 a change. — Robert A. Caro

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 behind the desk in the Oval Office. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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 — Robert A. Caro

Jim Rowe and George Reedy had made him understand the growing importance in liberal intellectual circles of thirty-nine-year-old Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a noted Harvard historian with a gift for incisive phrasemaking, — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

Recalling his mother's endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had thought that mothers never had to sleep. — Robert A. Caro

And, in fact, had Johnson's plan succeeded, in many ways it would indeed have been "just the way it was. — Robert A. Caro

When Silent Cal Coolidge noted that You don't have to explain something you haven't said, — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? (Robert Moses) — Robert A. Caro

Speaking out as he had never before done in Congress, Lyndon Johnson in 1947 opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal. — Robert A. Caro

He (LBJ) played on their fears as he played on their hopes. — Robert A. Caro

The belief that "a political system created in a much simpler economic era still affords the people effective control through their votes over the complex industrial state which has come into being" is a popular delusion. — Robert A. Caro

Dignity was a luxury in a fight with Lyndon Johnson, a luxury too expensive to afford. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

Determining the essence of different points of view (what Lyndon Johnson called "listening"), — Robert A. Caro

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) — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

He took the trolley instead of the bus because it was smoother and he could read on it. — Robert A. Caro

On the rare occasions on which a movie was shown, there was as much suspense in the audience over whether the electricity would hold out to the end of the film as there was in the film itself. — Robert A. Caro

I always tell the truth, so I don't need a good memory to remember what I said") - in — Robert A. Caro

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 — Robert A. Caro

Congress has a deep, vested interest in its own inefficiency. — Robert A. Caro

Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position. — Robert A. Caro

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 argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining. — Robert A. Caro

Emmett Till's murder" instilled in Anne Moody, a fourteen-year-old black girl from Alabama, "the fear of being killed just because I was black." It was the senselessness of the murder of the fourteen-year-old boy that she couldn't get out of her mind, she was to say. "I didn't know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough, I thought. — Robert A. Caro

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country that they summoned up, and, in some ways, summed up, the best of the American spirit, igniting hopes so that, almost on the instant it seemed, they summoned up a new era for Americans, an era of ideals, of brightness, of hope. — Robert A. Caro

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. — Robert A. Caro

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.' — Robert A. Caro

We of the South, — Robert A. Caro

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

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. — Robert A. Caro

They were interchangeable tools, and the catchy phrases continued without abatement. — Robert A. Caro

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 government to extend a helping hand to them - if necessary, to fight for them, to be their champion? — Robert A. Caro

No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South. — Robert A. Caro