Ron Suskind Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 81 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ron Suskind.
Famous Quotes By Ron Suskind
Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it. — Ron Suskind
The United States, the President said, "must be a force for good." Americans focused on "good." Much of the world focused on "force," on being handled. — Ron Suskind
These were lobbyists - many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings. — Ron Suskind
It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying. — Ron Suskind
To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them. — Ron Suskind
An exchange student from Afghanistan "finds himself in the midst of America's circus of self-invention" as he experiences Halloween for the first time. His hosts bauble, "It's the greatest of holidays when you can become anything you want. — Ron Suskind
One world leader warned another the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need. — Ron Suskind
For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes. — Ron Suskind
You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken. — Ron Suskind
Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world. — Ron Suskind
Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force. — Ron Suskind
If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,' — Ron Suskind
A boy, if he's lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with a self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys unfold in this natural, measured way, growing up with at least one adult on the scene who can convincingly fake being all-powerful, omniscient, and unfailingly protective for a kid's first decade or so, providing an invaluable canopy of reachable stars and monsters that are comfortably make-believe. — Ron Suskind
By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there's more news that's falling into books. — Ron Suskind
Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin. — Ron Suskind
A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president. — Ron Suskind
The whole game was about confidence, as it always was. Everything was fine - until it wasn't. — Ron Suskind
What can we do? It's not dismissive or resigned. He really wants to know. — Ron Suskind
He was confronted at an early age with adult-strength realizations about powerlessness, desperation, and distrust, taking his dose right alongside the overwhelmed adults. This steady stream of shocks and realizations leaves so many boys raised in poor, urban areas stumbling toward manhood with a hardened exterior masking deep insecurities. — Ron Suskind
He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules. — Ron Suskind
Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering. — Ron Suskind
All of the leading terrorism experts are clear on one thing: that in terms of protecting America, we are almost never going to know a place or a time of an attack. — Ron Suskind
Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mastering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference. — Ron Suskind
Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction. — Ron Suskind
When you get people standing up saying, 'I'm going to just tell the truth; what do we have to fear?,' it encourages others, and it creates a counterresponse. — Ron Suskind
This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes. — Ron Suskind
Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance. — Ron Suskind
You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds. — Ron Suskind
I think that there's a lot of anxiety out there in people wanting their children to be part of the mainstream, to achieve based on the well-worn yardsticks. — Ron Suskind
Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees. — Ron Suskind
I've been a reporter for 20 years, and I don't ever get things wrong. That's important in terms of my professional status. — Ron Suskind
In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them. — Ron Suskind
Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired. — Ron Suskind
He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose. — Ron Suskind
When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance. — Ron Suskind
Disequilibrium is often instigated by the will to power, a sleepless drive in the human personality to control others, to force them to do what one wants, or not to do what one opposes. — Ron Suskind
If the breadth of perspectives is wide enough to represent the fullest range of views, consensus is unlikely. If consensus is swiftly achieved, it probably means too few voices have been heard. — Ron Suskind
The key is to put your outrage in a place where you can get it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you're asked to explain new ideas or explain what you observed two people who share none of your experiences. — Ron Suskind
The media has become more forceful, has begun to recognize its traditional historic role and act on it, and truth is infectious. — Ron Suskind
I'm a partisan, too. I'm in favor of AUTHENTICITY. US State Department veteran and U.N. refugee official Wendy Chamberlain — Ron Suskind
I don't have to deal with the issues of the daily news cycle. — Ron Suskind
I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen — Ron Suskind
The fact is, I can vote for anybody; independents, Republicans, Democrats. But I'm a registered Democrat in the District of Columbia. — Ron Suskind
The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place. — Ron Suskind
The idea that our son would be like Raymond Babbitt was a shocking reordering of everything. And something we couldn't quite fathom, really. — Ron Suskind
The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government. — Ron Suskind
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating new realities ... we're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. — Ron Suskind
That's not the part that gnaws at Rolf. It's the last part, where Ezekiel says that if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them ... I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood. — Ron Suskind
A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate.
She said, simply, "But what do YOU think? — Ron Suskind
Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions. — Ron Suskind
The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere. — Ron Suskind
Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence. — Ron Suskind
Hebrews 11:1," says Mr. Taylor. "The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen." "NO. Wrong-you messed it!" Cedric laughs. "It goes: 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Man, Mr. Taylor, you always getting 'em wrong." Mr. Taylor howls, "All right, extra point for you," but, as usual, he wrestles the boy back to middle ground, thwarting an outright victory, "The Word, of course, is the Word my young friend. But make it into what's right for you. That's the lesson for today. Take from the Holy Scripture only what you need, nothing more. — Ron Suskind
The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises. — Ron Suskind
He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does. — Ron Suskind
Author describes auto CEO's decisions to drive rather than fly to Washington as "showy penitence". — Ron Suskind
Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness. — Ron Suskind
A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom? — Ron Suskind
Trust is something you have to practice. Someday you're going to fall in love with someone, and you need to understand what trust is all about. What you doing now is developing bad practices of betraying people's trust. — Ron Suskind
In his book The Soul of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois writes about always feeling his twoness
an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; to warring ideals in one dark body. — Ron Suskind
I'm [Paul O'Neill] an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me. — Ron Suskind
If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat. — Ron Suskind
You are livin'," she says in feigned exasperation. "You just don't see what I see. You got something special. Something you got from your ma. It's a thing. I mean, I wish I had it. It's this thing where you know what it's going to take, and then you get it done. You push yourself and you get there. — Ron Suskind
If you write something that gets a bad response, or someone commits candor or is off message, there are often consequences almost immediately when it appears in the paper or a magazine, that somebody gets called into the boss's office. And sometimes it can result in a loss of access for the reporter. — Ron Suskind
Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status. — Ron Suskind
The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot. — Ron Suskind
I absolutely reject that idea that the press is liberal and what it does is liberal. In my view, it's like accusing a doctor of malpractice or a lawyer of malfeasance. — Ron Suskind
Islam is in a formative period struggling to consolidate the vast reach won by both inspiration and force at its founding. Two centuries along, the faith of Muhammad hangs like an intricate veil: a religion still searching for institutional wholeness, a set of lessons to live by. — Ron Suskind
Security is by far the city's predominant business. — Ron Suskind
Al-Qaeda has a kind of loose, almost entrepreneurial structure with lots of cells in various countries that are semi-independent. — Ron Suskind
Every person has their pantheon - the Bible, Hollywood, Shakespeare - their way of understanding the world. — Ron Suskind
We are reformers in the spring, but iin autumn we stand by the old. Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ron Suskind
Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs. — Ron Suskind
Two hours a day for two days per week. Four hours. At $7.25 an hour, that gave him a gross income of $29 a week. He is also now a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International, the union that represents food workers, retail clerks, and farm workers. His monthly dues for the UFCW are $25, all taken out of his first week's check. That makes Owen arguably the most selfless labor activist in America, with 86 percent of his pay going to support his union. — Ron Suskind
Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches. — Ron Suskind