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
See more on GoodReads
“Stress used to gnaw and saw away inside me like a tiny black hole. I learned that in spite of the stress, I could do everything I needed to do: study, make top grades, shop for the right clothes, and put on that perfect smile. Some days, I felt like Wonder Woman.
The only thing I couldn't do was eat.”
― quote from Elena Vanishing
“Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound. For a child with an undetonated bomb in its hands, a sensible thing to do would be to put it down gently, quickly back out of the room, and contact the nearest adult. Yet what we have here is not one child but many, each with access to an independent trigger mechanism. The chances that we will all find the sense to put down the dangerous stuff seem almost negligible. Some little idiot is bound to press the ignite button just to see what happens.”
― Nick Bostrom, quote from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
“You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.”
― S. Jae-Jones, quote from Wintersong
“But at least this place has dinosaurs.”
― Shannon Messenger, quote from Nightfall
“Books were, and always would be, something a little magic and something to respect.”
― Sally Thorne, quote from The Hating Game
Creation
Incidents in the Lif...
The Round House
Demons of the Ocean
Amadeus
Inside Out & Back Ag...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
