Richard Ben Cramer · 1072 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“(Wide open! Some of these North Dakota towns made Russell, Kansas, look urban.)”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“If Steve Symms lost, it would turn the country over to liberals, to TEDDY KENNEDY!”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Reagan kept saying the deficit was Public Enemy Number One. But then he sent up a budget that would have pumped red ink up over the window sills.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“with loyalty oaths waving as weapons in the hands of the know-nothing right, the values of liberal education seemed to hang in the balance in 1952.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“They called in medics, but two got killed trying to get to Dole.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“In the bad old seventies, when Mondale was Veep, and the government still worried about things like fuel and noise, the Vice President flew on small, efficient DC-9S.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“But now, in the age of Reagan, Bush mostly flew a big old 707, the Stratoliner, a Cadillac-with-tailfins kind of plane, so heavy, noisy, and greedy for fuel that no commercial airline would be permitted to land one at an American airport.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Then he dipped his finger into Dole’s shredded jacket, and with Dole’s blood traced an “M” on his forehead. That’d let the medics know he’d had a shot—another would kill him, overdose ... if a medic ever got there ... if McBryar could spot one”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“A Governor could make all the difference in a state: KEAN: BUSH VISIT MEANS N.J. HAS A FRIEND IN WHITE HOUSE That would be the headline from Trenton, if the Governor, like Tom Kean, was a friend who’d billboard Bush’s day in the Garden State—his visit to that toxic-waste cleanup site, all the help he’d offered on that Superfund. ... Of course, if the Governor wasn’t a friend, then his appointed State Police Chief might find time to take a couple of press calls. ... That would be a different headline: BUSH VISIT WILL COST $200,000 IN OVERTIME”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“That’s what made it worse, in the end ... when he found out. Nixon had lied to him, personally.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Even a year later, Bush remarked to a friend, with uncharacteristic bluntness: “I wouldn’t care if I never see Richard Nixon again.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Yeah, they told me, just be yourself ... so I did. Maybe that was the problem.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Anyway, there were no bigger fans in town than Chet and Bub Dawson. (Chet was a diehard K-State fan. He’d claim: “If KU was playin’ Russia, I’d root for Russia.”)”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“The white men on the Brinkley set were trying not to grin, like cheap lawyers at a ten-car pileup: Uh, did that mean Senator Dole didn’t think all the facts were out? Didn’t he believe the White House, that North and Poindexter were the only ones who knew? The Bobster dropped an eyebrow and rasped: “Aghh, don’t think Ripley’d believe that.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Anyway, the job didn’t call for deep thinking: if you thought too much, brought your insight and intellect to bear on the problems of the nation, you’d get out front of the President, or worse still, off to the side. That’s the surest way down the trash chute in the White House. There’s only one question that the Vice President needs to ask: “What’s the President saying on this?” Anything else is begging for trouble, and George Bush had brains enough to figure that out.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“In fact, Reagan couldn’t remember his grandchildren’s names, and he had no friends, only the husbands of Nancy’s friends.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“George Bush knew five times more about the governments of the world—his own included—than Ronald Reagan ever would.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“The ministerial students were the worst—they were maybe one-third to one-half of each class, and this was their trade school. They came to learn the right words, all the proper formulae ... which they wrote down and memorized from the lectures of their profs.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“And there’d be no point: Why would he give his life over to this, if it were not for the notion that he could do something great?”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
Richard Ben Cramer
Born place: in Rochester, New York, The United States
Born date June 12, 1950
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“And so everything I see in this world, it all moves backward and forward at the same time, like a black-smith's bellows, like everything in my press, turning into its opposite at the command of the red and green buttons, and that's what makes the world go round.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from Too Loud a Solitude
“I have no physical symptoms, but psychologically there's this burden. I've got to get rid of it somehow. Of course, when I first went back to work I was scared the same thing might happen again. It takes positive thinking to overcome fear, otherwise you'll carry around this victim mentality forever.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
“God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of humans are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with the quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And, now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, quote from The Law
“Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
“What does responsibility mean? Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself. Having accepted this circumstance, this event, this problem, responsibility then means the ability to have a creative response to the situation as it is now. All problems contain the seeds of opportunity, and this awareness allows you to take the moment and transform it to a better situation or thing.”
― Deepak Chopra, quote from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams
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