Quote

The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie.

Theodore White

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Theodore White
Age: 71 †
Born: 1915
Born: May 6
Died: 1986
Died: May 15
Historian
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Dorchester
Massachusetts
Theodore Harold White
Lying
Corners
Doesn
Street
Night
Rain
Best
Politician
Time
Streets
Stump
Late
Stumps
Listen
Exhausted
Politics
Corner

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America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose.
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I class myself as a manual laborer.
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For those men who, sooner or later, are lucky enough to break away from the pack, the most intoxicating moment comes when they cease being bodies in other men's command and find that they control their own time, when they learn their own voice and authority.
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The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It deter- mines what people will talk and think about-an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.
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I, alas, must present myself somewhat ignominiously as a chef in a busy kitchen. Somewhere a novel is bubbling on a back burner, an old attempt at history may come out of the freezer.
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A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I'm somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill.
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Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
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Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.
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There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.
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It is almost nicer being a godfather than a father, like having white mice but making your nanny feed them for you.
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Those 40 or 50 national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps - they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.
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The job of intellectuals is to come up with ideas, and all we've been producing is footnotes.
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The gusto of one, the indignation of the other the challenge of the one party, the response of the other the eloquence and the comedy, the passion and the issues were ours-no other country can provide them.
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The American dream is not over. America is an adventure.
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Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
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A President and his wise men can only propose but Congress disposes. It is when President and Congress agree that American history marches forward.
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History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
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With electricity we were wired into a new world, for electricity brought the radio, a crystal set and with enough ingenuity, one could tickle the crystal with a cat's whisker and pick up anything.
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With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.
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Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future.
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