Robert Caro Quotes

If it's necessary to join a caucus and get a committee assignment, I'll do it.

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.

In the end, I think part of my problem was that I was a better legislator than I was a politician.

There was nothing exceptional about growing up as the son of a congressman.

I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.

I'm only sort of a politician.

I think I went into poli-sci because I knew there was a stage, plus I thought I wanted to help people, and I realized in poli-sci that if you want to be a politician you're either born into it, or you've got an amazing brain, which those are rare - and I don't have one.

Life itself has so much politics, why should I make it my profession? I'm just a politician's son, not a politician myself. Two politicians, that's my dad and elder brother, in the family are enough. I'm happy doing my own stuff in Bollywood.

Ralph Reed is deeply ambitious and always was so. There was a time when he... in one of my interviews, he said he pondered running the Ross Perot campaign, and he wasn't sure he wanted to do the Christian Right thing; he was worried that it boxed him into a corner.

I've often thought having a politician for a parent must be like having a constantly embarrassing uncle.

I talked to the rest of the nation for about ten minutes about what Lyndon Johnson was doing for the people of the Northeast. In truth, I thought I was laying it on a bit thickly. But when I returned and spoke with the President, he mentioned several points I could have added. I learned that it was simply not possible to lay it on too thickly for him (or most other politicians).

In politics there are very few self-made men—most are machine-made.

A politician rises on the backs of his friends ... but it is through his enemies he will have to govern afterwards.

Lyndon, please tell me as soon as you can what the deal is … I am afraid its politics. I would hate for you to go into politics.

The hardest thing in most Ottawa men's [politicians] pants is their cellular phone.

Lunched with Jack Kennedy, the new Senator from Massachusetts. He has the making of a first-class Senator or a first-class fascist.

He survived politically for forty years. No matter what the issue was, it did not concern him. He knew that if he could call a man’s name in a crowd, shake hands with him and ask him about his wife and children, whose names were also in the little book, he had that man’s vote.

Men in political life must be ambitious.

I think there are a lot of outside interests that would like to see Sarah Palin in some form of elected office. Most in Alaska recognize our former governor is really not involved in or engaged in the state anymore, that she's moved to other interests.

Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class.

Well, I spent 23 years in politics, and bits of that were fun.

I had dreams of high political office.

The traditional path to making a name for yourself in our family is running for elective office, and I couldn't do that because, for one thing, all the really good offices were taken.

He's a nice guy who will never change the Senate. He is the Senate. Eighteen years in politics, and he's got two cousins who are senators, too. Mark Udall's dad even ran for president.

I'm a man with a great political future behind me.