02UndatedStories are "how we organize the chaos of experience into the order we require just a carry-on." Joan GideonRick Perlstein / quote ↗
03UndatedPresidents are also always storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
06UndatedGoverning is not a hero's profession. It is a profession of compromises.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
07UndatedAn anti-politician is hardly an anti-politician once he starts winning and works to close the deal by working to sew up the Establishment.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
08UndatedHe talks to people's grievances, but he doesn't seem mad. – Elizabeth DrewRick Perlstein / quote ↗
09UndatedChronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
11UndatedAlmost alone among successful politicians, he took slights personally.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
13UndatedA candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
14UndatedViolent crimes had increased from 120 per 100,000 in 1962 180 per 100,000 by 1964.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
15UndatedFor the first time on Planet Earth (in 1964 America), a nation was made up of more college students than farmers. An unheard-of 42% of high school graduates sought higher education.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
16UndatedTeddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB (ad men) found nothing to lament and the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to KNOW about a product, which in this case happens to be a human being, in half a minute – the speed not of thought but of emotion.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
17UndatedRebelling against the status quo was one of the definitions of conservatism.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
18UndatedI think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate." Martin Luther King, Jr. after the violent reception he received in Chicago in 1966.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
19Undated(President) Lyndon Johnson still snapped between exultation and insecurity.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
20UndatedGoldwater had never even considered a non-Arizonan. Like a man on his deathbed, he wanted to be surrounded only by friends.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
21UndatedA confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
22UndatedRichard Nixon's conversation was "loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
23UndatedOne of the ladies asked about that awful Bobby Kennedy, and Goldwater responded by speaking about the attorney general with touching affection. (Mary) McGrory recalled how Jack Kennedy behaved at a similar stage in his campaign: spouting statistics, attacking carefully chosen enemies and puffing all the right friends, quoting dead Greeks, never cracking a joke lest he remind the voters how young he was.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
24UndatedTo claim the mantle of purity is always a risky business. It just gives an excuse to be disillusioned once your ordinary humidity is exposed.Rick Perlstein / quote ↗
