Quotes by Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate

“The breath of life of the Senate is, of course, continuity,”

“People who sneer at a half a loaf of bread have never been hungry." George Reedy”

“He not only had the gift of reading men and women, of seeing into their hearts, he also had the gift of putting himself in their place, of not just seeing what they felt but of feeling what they fe...”

“The air of compromise is rarely appreciated fully by men of principle. C. Vann Woodward”

“With Johnson, you never quite knew if he was out to lift your heart or your wallet. Roy Wilkins”

“He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones.”

“He could be as memorable an orator as his father, particularly when he was speaking on that topic that had captured his imagination;”

“Sam Rayburn on LBJ's recuperation from his heart attack: "It would kill him if he relaxed.”

“their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine,”

“Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience a sa...”

“Lyndon Johnsons sentences were the sentences of a man with a remarkable gift for words, not long words but evocative, of a man with a remarkable gift for images, homey images of a vividness that in...”

“(LBJ) had what a journalist calls a genius for analogy made the point unforgettably, in dialect, in the rhythmic cadences of a great storyteller. Master of the senate”

“He took the trolley instead of the bus because it was smoother and he could read on it.”

“That speech (Daniel Webster's) raised the idea of Union above contract or expediency and enshrined it in the American heart.”

“its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members could be dealt with only in bodies and droves.”

“While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men a great reader of men.”

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

“He could follow someones mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.”

“Recalling his mothers endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had thought that mothers never had to sl...”

“He not only had the gift of “reading” men and women, of seeing into their hearts, he also had the gift of putting himself in their place, of not just seeing what they felt but of feeling what they ...”