Quotes About Influence

A surprising number of representatives," the Saturday Evening Post reported, "knew his hat and coat, when it hangs on its accustomed peg in the House restaurant"—a discreet reference to the fact that many Congressmen checked to see that he was present before they entered the restaurant, lest they be forced to pay for their meals themselves.

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

When talking with older men, men who could help him, Lyndon Johnson "gave them," this aide says, "whatever they wanted to hear.

Debates educated a nation. That educative function had atrophied during decades of making decisions behind closed doors.

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.

People are always asking me why I chose Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson to write about. Well, I must say I never thought of my books as the stories of Moses or Johnson. I never had the slightest interest in writing the life of a great man. From the very start, I thought of writing biographies as a means of illuminating the times of the men I was writing about and the great forces that molded those times—particularly the force that is political power.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.

A managed democracy is a wonderful thing... for the managers... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible'.

God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody.

Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss.

An honest politician is one that stays bought.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

I'm a professional bad example. You can learn a lot by watching me. Or listening to me. Either one.

All three of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one's earliest training.

No, I hadn't made any decision; my mouth was leading its own life.

the government'—that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government'—but what individuals?

English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it. Nobody tried to stop this process, the way some languages are policed and have official limits . . . probably because there never has been, truly, such a thing as 'the King's English'—for 'the King's English' was French. English was in truth a bastard tongue and nobody cared how it grew . . . and it did!—enormously.

Anywhere is home to the man with a fat bank account—the cops leave him alone.

If I've reached the place where I'm a good influence on anybody, it's time I cultivated some new vices.

Television leaves no external scars.

It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has.

To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives—such