97 Quotes by Robert Caro

Bob Moses had learned what was needed to make dreams become realities. He had learned the lesson of power.And now he grabbed for power with both hands.To free his hands for the grab, he shook impatiently from them the last crumbs of the principles with which he had entered public service and for which, during his years of idealism, he had fought so hard.

You read in every textbook that cliché: Power corrupts. In my opinion, I’ve learned that power does not always corrupt. Power can cleanse. When you’re climbing to get power, you have to use whatever methods are necessary, and you have to conceal your aims. Because if people knew your aims, it might make them not want to give you power.

There is a time to fish and a time to mend nets.

In later years, when Lady Bird Johnson would talk about the time that her husband had been a senator, she would sometimes say, "those were the happiest twelve years of our lives." Those years had been happy - and now they were over. The Senate had been Lyndon Johnson's home. Now he had left it.

You don't have to explain something you didn't say.

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.