Robert Caro Quotes

“But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.”

“Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals.”

“If you can't come into a room and tell right away who is for you and who is against you, you have no business in politics.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.”

“What convinces is conviction. You simply have to believe in the argument you are advancing; if you don't, you're as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn't there.”

“The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you. The most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.”

“We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation.”

“What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.”

“Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately.”

“It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.”