Robert Caro
Robert Caro

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

The Senate is an unknowing world.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

If you really want to show power in its larger aspects, you need to show the effects on the powerless, for good or ill - the human cost of public works. That's what I try to do, show not only how power works but its effect on people.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

I trained myself to be organized.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

I finish what I have to do in the office.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

If things are going well, if the writing's coming along, I jump out of bed happy. And if the previous day has been bad, I get out of bed disgruntled.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life.

Robert Caro
Robert Caro

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.