Best quotes by Robert Caro on Power

Checkout quotes by Robert Caro on Power

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

  - Robert Caro
  

• ‟ 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.

  - Robert Caro
  

• ‟ Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything. We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. He had more power than anyone, and he held it for 48 years.

  - Robert Caro
  

• ‟ Long Island is shaped the way it is largely because of Robert Moses. Long Island is a perfect example of how political power shapes people's lives every day.

  - 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
  

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

  - 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
  

• ‟ You know, we're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected.

  - Robert Caro