Quotes from David Maraniss

My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint.

People always try to separate the good from the bad in Clinton and say that, if he had not done certain things, he would have been a great president. But you can't do that. Those were his major characteristics.

Reuther yearned to be near the center of power, and Johnson was masterly at the twin arts of flattery and manipulation, making Reuther feel that he was the president's confidant.

though he would deliver that speech twenty-eight miles away, in Ann Arbor, no place seemed more important to his mission than Detroit, a great city that honored labor, built cars, made music, promoted civil rights, and helped lift working people into the middle class. "This city and its people are the herald of hope in America," he said. "Prosperity in America must begin here in Detroit.

he and Smokey would exchange pickup lines and laments and rhymes until they had possible stanzas for a new song. One came up with "You got a smile so bright / you know you coulda been a candle." The other responded with "I'm holding you so tight / You know you coulda been a handle." And eventually they had composed "The Way You Do the Things You Do.

In a democratic society there are rules -- written and un-written -- which must be followed if the free institutions of that society are to endure. They include the right to protest -- even against the freedoms which allow those protests. But they do not include the right to interfere with the rights of others without due process of law.

As integral as religion was to his sense of self, it was not until he reached West Point and combined his spiritual discipline with Blaik's military discipline that his coaching persona began to take its mature form. Everything he knew about organizing a team and preparing it to play its best, Lombardi said later, he learned at West Point. "It all came from Red Blaik.

Go about your work with a quiet confidence that cannot be shake...No matter what happens, remember if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains.' (Ducky Drake, UCLA Track Coach)

There never was a champion who, to himself, was a good loser. There is a vast difference between a good sport and a good loser." In Blaik's opinion the "purpose of the game is to win. To dilute the will to win is to destroy the purpose of the game." In this, as in most matters, he was influenced by General MacArthur. He never forgot MacArthur's words: "There is no substitute for victory.

Late on weekend nights, when Vince was at last free from athletics, he took Marie out to his favorite haunts with the Palaus and other friends. They often drove up Route 9W to Englewood Cliffs for a late meal at Leo's and then some band music at the Rustic Cabin, where they fell into the habit of buying a beer and steak sandwich for a performer who came over to their table to chat after his closing set, a skinny young Italian crooner from Hoboken named Frank Sinatra.

The time was ordinary, 24 seconds, but the victory was historic. From that crowded little red house in Clarksville, out of an extended family of twenty-two kids, from a childhood of illness and leg braces, out of a small historically black college that had no scholarships, from a country where she could be hailed as a heroine and yet denied lunch at a counter, Skeeter had become golden, sweeping the sprints in Rome.

A date was soon set for the wedding. He and Marie were married on Saturday, August 31, 1940, at the Church of Our Lady of Refuge on East 196th Street in the Bronx. The nuptial mass was performed by the Reverend Jeremiah F. Nemecek, a Fordham football fan who idolized the Seven Blocks of Granite

she had married Vince because he seemed solid, religious and faithful, unlike her father. She believed, as he did, in the sacredness and lifelong commitment of marriage. She told herself that she would have to adjust.

Oftentimes the child is the father of the man.

Like many very rich people, Ford did not have to sell himself; Iacocca knew no other way. "He had a lot of ability," Ford later said of Iacocca. "Unfortunately his ability lies ninety-nine percent in sales. But it isn't only in selling cars—it's selling everything.

The Sunday edition of the Detroit News on September 15 ran a special section about "Olympic City," making the case for how and why Detroit would be selected. The next day Cavanagh was at the White House where, at four in the afternoon, President Kennedy signed Joint Resolution 72, expressing Congress's full support for Detroit.

GEORGE ROMNEY, HAIR SLICKED BACK from his broad forehead, his tanned mug exuding executive-class prosperity, came to Grosse Pointe ready to hit the streets as a protester.

His distaste for the Detroit underworld went back to his earliest days with Walter Reuther, when the unsavory connections between legal and illicit power centers in the city emerged in the most harrowing way.

The "big wheels" of Detroit, as a local society writer called them, appeared at the Ford Auditorium's semicircular front drive in midnight-black limos and emerged in dark tuxedos and dark business suits. It was a warm night, but that did not curtail the number of women wearing mink stoles over short, bright-colored dresses with matching satin shoes.

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Giacalone lived in a redbrick palace on Balfour Street in Grosse Pointe Park between East Jefferson and the Detroit River. Only the highest-ranking mobsters, of whom he was one, had homes there.

Competitive sports keeps alive in all of us a spirit of vitality and enterprise. It teaches the strong to know when they are weak and the brave to face themselves when they are afraid. To be proud and unbending in defeat, yet humble and gentle in victory. To master ourselves before we attempt to master others. To learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep, and it gives a predominance of courage over timidity.

Men needed the test of competition to find their better selves, Lombardi insisted, whether it was in sports, politics or business.

The vaunted liberty which was to make us free has eventuated in a more galling servitude to man's lower nature—especially to sex on the one hand, and to autocratic political power on the other. It is only the truth which can make us free and the truth is that liberty unchecked by law, the Natural Law of God and human law in accordance with the law of God, leads to license and thence to servitude.