Robert Caro Political Quotations

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

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.

Herman Brown was a businessman who wanted value for money spent. His relationships with politicians were measured by that criterion.

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

Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives