Robert Dallek Quotes

The Bay of Pigs was an operation the United States endorsed. That was a preventive operation. We were afraid that Castro was going to subvert the hemisphere. ~ Robert Dallek

As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership. ~ Robert Dallek

President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress. ~ Robert Dallek

Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible. ~ Robert Dallek

If Roosevelt didn't have World War II, he never would have had a third term. ~ Robert Dallek

What did in the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union. ~ Robert Dallek

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear. ~ Robert Dallek

With television, you can make anyone look larger than life. ~ Robert Dallek

Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society launched an anti-Communist crusade that won the support of millions of Americans in the 1950s. ~ Robert Dallek

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy. ~ Robert Dallek

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself. ~ Robert Dallek

By the time a second term rolls around, the illusions about a president have largely evaporated. ~ Robert Dallek

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain. ~ Robert Dallek

After one party loses two elections in a row, there's sort of blood in the water. ~ Robert Dallek

Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws. ~ Robert Dallek

The disaster at the Bay of Pigs intensified Kennedy's doubts about listening to advisers from the CIA, the Pentagon, or the State Department who had misled him or allowed him to accept lousy advice. ~ Robert Dallek

Public scandals are America's favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings. ~ Robert Dallek

The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country's hope. ~ Robert Dallek

Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country. ~ Robert Dallek

Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That's been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance. ~ Robert Dallek

Few American presidents are held in higher esteem than Thomas Jefferson. Though historians have scrutinized every phase of his long public career and found him wanting in a number of respects, he holds an unshakable place in the pantheon of American heroes. ~ Robert Dallek

There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't. ~ Robert Dallek

It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The Atlantic conference in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland is a dramatic moment in World War II history because for the first time, Roosevelt and Churchill are meeting face to face in this war. ~ Robert Dallek

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States. ~ Robert Dallek

Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate. ~ Robert Dallek

John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems ... spastic colitis. ~ Robert Dallek

Clinton's egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place. ~ Robert Dallek

I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is. ~ Robert Dallek

Presidents are not only the country's principal policy chief, shaping the nation's domestic and foreign agendas, but also the most visible example of our values. ~ Robert Dallek

Congress becomes the public voice of opposition. ~ Robert Dallek

It's always valuable for someone running for president ... to have as much bipartisan support as possible. ~ Robert Dallek

For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history. ~ Robert Dallek

In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine. ~ Robert Dallek

Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union. ~ Robert Dallek

Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam. ~ Robert Dallek

Nixon's deep antipathy toward Jews is well known, and he took a strange satisfaction in having Kissinger in his inner circle, where he could periodically taunt him. ~ Robert Dallek

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions. ~ Robert Dallek

When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall. ~ Robert Dallek

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson. ~ Robert Dallek

Besieged by lawsuits that threatened to engulf almost everyone at the White House, Clinton assistants shunned paper or e-mail records of their daily deliberations. One told me that he would go down the hall to confer with his division chief face to face rather than discuss an issue on the telephone. ~ Robert Dallek

Unity is Obama's theme. ~ Robert Dallek

It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. ~ Robert Dallek

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks. ~ Robert Dallek

They are pretty good at improvising, but God help us if they are given time to think. Dean Atchison ~ Robert Dallek

Concealing one's true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency. ~ Robert Dallek

Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else. ~ Robert Dallek

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate. ~ Robert Dallek

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate. ~ Robert Dallek

Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy. ~ Robert Dallek

I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union. ~ Robert Dallek

McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all. ~ Robert Dallek

Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration. ~ Robert Dallek

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights. ~ Robert Dallek

Allegations that President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich partly in return for donations to his presidential library have raised questions about the value of such institutions and the federal appropriations that support them. ~ Robert Dallek

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. ~ Robert Dallek

Whatever the long-term legal prospects for same-sex marriage, President Obama's willingness to put the matter front and center in an election year can at least make him a candidate for inclusion in Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. ~ Robert Dallek

Late 19th-century populists saw bankers and industrialists manipulating markets to enrich themselves at the expense of small farmers and labourers and favoured political candidates promising economic relief through free and unlimited coinage of silver. ~ Robert Dallek

Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history. ~ Robert Dallek

Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back? ~ Robert Dallek

McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who'd had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously. ~ Robert Dallek

Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K. ~ Robert Dallek

Presidents need to be critically studied and analyzed. ~ Robert Dallek

Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly. ~ Robert Dallek

Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history. ~ Robert Dallek

The lifelong health problems of John F. Kennedy constitute one of the best-kept secrets of recent U.S. history - no surprise, because if the extent of those problems had been revealed while he was alive, his presidential ambitions would likely have been dashed. ~ Robert Dallek

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer. ~ Robert Dallek

Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.'s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it. ~ Robert Dallek

How different our national perspective would be had Johnson, rather than Nixon, served from 1969 to 1973. ~ Robert Dallek

If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done. ~ Robert Dallek

A presidential candidate's great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn't mean they are utterly insincere. ~ Robert Dallek

My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War. ~ Robert Dallek

At the end of the day, Americans are not so keen on ideologues, people who have such fixed positions that they can't see any virtue in the other side's point of view. ~ Robert Dallek

Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see. ~ Robert Dallek

During his presidency, Truman and the Republicans were locked in a series of furious assaults on each other that outraged him and made Truman an enduring foe of a party and its representatives, which he saw as on the wrong side of almost every domestic and foreign policy issue he considered important. ~ Robert Dallek

At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill. ~ Robert Dallek

He who had known us before we were even born came to know us infinitely better as he knelt in Gethsemane and as he hung on the cross of Calvary. We come to know those we serve (Mosiah 5:13; compare 1 John 2:3-4). And we certainly come to love and treasure those for whom we sacrifice. Conversely, the depth of the pain we feel in behalf of a loved one is intimately tied to the depth of the love we bear that loved one. Thus only a being filled with infinite and eternal love could perform an infinite and eternal sacrifice. ~ Robert L. Millet

There were large and small ones too. And some quite in-between. But all of equal nastiness.
And smelliness and ghastliness.
For they would eat a fellow up, as one might fish and chips ~ Robert Rankin

Pike got into the Lexus, but Larkin stepped inside the door so he couldn't close it. Her face seemed as brittle as a ceramic mask, and Pike suddenly remembered how she had looked up in the desert when she was unloading on her father. Only now she didn't seem so much angry as betrayed. Pike gentled his voice. I'm sorry if I should have discussed it with you. I didn't think it would be an issue. ~ Robert Crais

Negativity is simply the devil's language spoken by those who have his perspective." God's language is faith. Nothing is impossible with God (see Matt. 19:26). God never speaks negatively. He speaks truth. Even when He speaks truth, He speaks it by faith, because He sees what can happen.
Faith doesn't mean that you don't see the problem. Faith means you can see past the problem to the answer. You're not saying, "There is no problem." You're saying, "There is an answer!"
By ~ Robert Morris

I'm actually a lot happier because I work as a teacher; more than just a capitalist making money for myself. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Success in battle is not a function of how many show up, but who they are. ~ Robert H. Barrow

Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue to his character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion. ~ Robert J. McCracken

My invitation to you is to begin living every moment as though you are miraculous and deserve to live an extraordinary life. Fake it if you must and keep faking it until it's real to you. The gift you will be giving yourself is a lifelong journey of discovery, one that is infinite and infinitely rewarding. Begin the journey. Today. This moment. Now. ~ Robert White

Their silent wounds have speech
More eloquent than men;
Their tones can deeper reach
Than human voice or pen. ~ William Robert Woodman

Keep an eye to the future, and ear to the past, and after thinking it over notice nothing much lasts. ~ Robert Hunter

Nature has put itself the problem how to catch in flight light streaming to the earth and to store the most elusive of all powers in rigid form. To achieve this aim, it has covered the crust of earth with organisms which in their life processes absorb the light of the sun and use this power to produce a continuously accumulating chemical difference ... The plants take in one form of power, light; and produce another power, chemical difference. ~ Robert Mayer

I thought I was in love, but it was only a head cold. (Humans) ~ Robert Emmett

How could one of the most important and unbelievable moments in art history - not to mention the history of a world war - simply become a forgotten footnote? But that's exactly what happened. ~ Robert M. Edsel

The fact is ... that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy. ~ Robert Scheer

Never quit, Rikki. No one can beat you if you don't quit. ~ Robert Ferrigno

Sweetbuns?" "Tradition among us Two Rivers folk." "Never heard of that tradition." "It's very obscure." "Ah, I see. And what did you do to those buns?" "Sprinklewort," Mat said. "It'll turn her mouth blue for a week, maybe two. And she won't share the sweetbuns with anyone, except maybe her Warders. Joline is addicted to the things. She must have eaten seven or eight bags' worth since we got to Caemlyn." "Nice," Thom said, knuckling his mustache. "Childish, though." "I'm trying to get back to my basic roots," Mat said. "You know, recapture some of my lost youth. ~ Robert Jordan

Sharks only eat wet people ~ Robert G. Mills

Grassroots groups challenge the "business-as-usual" environmentalism that is generally practiced by the more privileged wildlife-and conservation-oriented groups. The focus of activists of color and their constituents reflects their life experiences of social, economic, and political disenfranchisement. ~ Robert D Bullard

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

There is a price, which you have to pay. You are 24 hours on the job, if you go out in public. ~ Robert Pattinson

No one needs to tell me about the importance of the free press in a democratic society or about the essential role a newspaper can play in its community. ~ Robert Kennedy

No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find,
My subject is of man, and human kind. ~ Robert Burton

No ease for the boy at the keyhole,
his telescope,
when the women's white bodies flashed
in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail.

Nothing! No oil
for the eye, nothing to pour
on those waters or flames.
I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil. ~ Robert Lowell

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson