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.”

“I drew a series of concentric circles on a piece of paper. And in the center I put a dot. The dot was Robert Moses, and the innermost circle was his family. And then, the next one, his friends. So I said, well, maybe he can stop everyone in the first few circles from talking to me, but he won't be able to remember all the people that he's dealt with in the outer circles. I'll start with them.”

“So, you're doing this book, you're writing about the guy who has power. You haven't even thought about writing in detail about the people who have no power, and what power does to them.”

“You will never achieve what you want to achieve unless you learn to stop thinking with your fingers.”

“There is no truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is. And finding facts—through reading documents or through interviewing and re-interviewing—can't be rushed; it takes time. Truth takes time.”

“Power doesn't always corrupt. What power always does is reveal. When a guy gets into a position where he doesn't have to worry anymore, then you see what he wanted to do all along.”

“Everything you've been doing is basically baloney, because underlying everything that you do on politics is the belief that we live in a democracy. And in a democracy power comes from being elected, from our votes at a ballot box.”

“People get so angry at me because I interview them over and over again. And I say, "But if I were standing there next to you, what would I see?”

“Research is fun. Writing is hard. It's so easy to fool yourself into thinking that you're working hard. It's so easy not to write. So you use any trick you can to make yourself know there's work to be done. That's why I wear a jacket and tie when I sit down to write.”