“A handshake, as delivered by Lyndon Johnson, could be as effective as a hug.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“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, quote from Means of Ascent
“Until the end of his life, whenever the subject of the vast growth of the LBJ Company and associated business enterprises was raised, Lyndon Johnson would emphasize that he owned none of it (“All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson.… I don’t have any interest in government-regulated industries of any kind and never have had”).”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“He (LBJ) played on their fears as he played on their hopes.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“(Until the end of their lives, these men and women would tell stories about the summer they followed Lyndon Johnson and his Flying Windmill around Texas; as Oliver Knight of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would write about one trip, “That mad dash from Navasota to Conroe in which I dodged stumps at 70 MPH just to keep up with that contraption will ever be green in my memory.”) At the landing site, there would be the brief respite”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“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, quote from Means of Ascent
“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, quote from Means of Ascent
“With a note of sadness, Wicker wrote in 1983 that “the reverence, the childlike dependence, the willingness to follow where the President leads, the trust, are long gone—gone, surely, with Watergate, but gone before that.… After Lyndon Johnson, after the ugly war that consumed him, trust in ‘the President’ was tarnished forever.” That tarnishing revolutionized politics and government in the United States. The shredding of the delicate yet crucial fabric of credence and faith between the people of the United States and the man they had placed in the White House occurred during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“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, quote from Means of Ascent
“Speaking out as he had never before done in Congress, Lyndon Johnson in 1947 opposed most of Truman’s “Fair Deal.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
“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, quote from Means of Ascent
“dignity was a luxury in a fight with Lyndon Johnson, a luxury too expensive to afford.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Means of Ascent
Robert A. Caro
Born place: in New York, The United States
Born date October 30, 1935
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“I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.
I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out or die to get rid of it. It's always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“She may be trained, but I'm fighting for my family, my home, my freedom. She's fighting for a goddamn paycheck.”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from This Shattered World
“A world of random soul mates would be a lonely one. Let’s hope that’s not what we live in.”
― Randall Munroe, quote from What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
“Quillonians were a reclusive race, proud, prone to drama, and violent when cornered. A couple of them had stayed at my parents’ inn, and as long as everything went their way, they were perfectly cordial, but the moment any small problem appeared, they would start putting exclamation marks at the end of all their sentences. My mother didn’t like dealing with them. She was very practical. If you brought a problem to her, she’d take it apart and figure out how best to resolve it. From what I remembered, Quillonians didn’t always want their problems resolved. They wanted a chance to shake their clawed fists at the sky, invoke their gods, and act as if the world was ending.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Sweep in Peace
“I saw immediately what they were: human technology that had become haunted, possessed by quick, gleaming cleverness. I had seen smart machines before then, but nothing with the agility and cunning of true intelligence. I knew instantly that these were a different order of machine. Some alchemy of chaos and complexity had given their minds powers of consciousness and free will.”
― Alastair Reynolds, quote from House of Suns
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