Lessons from Robert Caro

On Power

Robert Caro's work is renowned for its deep exploration of the nature of political power. Here are some of his most trenchant observations:

"Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals." [1][2]
"When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do." [1]
"But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary." [3][4]
"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." [1]
"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." [1]
"Science, knowledge, logic and brilliance might be useful tools but they didn't build highways or civil service systems. Power built highways and civil service systems." [3][5]
"Power was what dreams needed, not power in the hand of the dreamer himself necessarily but power put behind the dreamer's dream by the man who it to put there, power that he termed “executive support”." [3][5]
"Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon." [3]
"In power, you can accomplish things. Without it, you're impotent." [6]
"Power is the fevered dream of the powerless." [6]
"Bob Moses had learned what was needed to make dreams become realities. He had learned the lesson of power. And now he grabbed for power with both hands." [5][7]
"We certainly see how government can work to your detriment today, but people have forgotten what government can do for you. They've forgotten the potential of government, the power of government, to transform people's lives for the better." [8]
"Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections." [5]
"President Kennedy's eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson's hammer blows are designed to make men act." [3][4]
"What mattered to him was winning, because he knew what losing could be, what its consequences could be." [9]

On Research and Truth

Caro is legendary for his meticulous and exhaustive research methods. These quotes and learnings reflect his philosophy on uncovering the facts.

"Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamned page." [10][11]
"While I am aware that there is no Truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is." [10][12]
"It's the research that takes the time." [11]
"If you talk to people long enough, if you talk to them enough times, you find out things from them that maybe they didn't even realize they knew." [10]
"Silence is the weapon, silence and people's need to fill it–as long as the person isn't you, the interviewer." [10]
"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." [1]
"The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you." [8]
"Place is always a major player in Caro's books. He's determined to put you in the middle of the culture, scene and action." [11]
"I came to realize that if I wanted to write about political power the way I wanted to write about it, I would have to show the effect of power not just on those who wield power but on those on whom it's wielded, on the powerless." [13]
"A newcomer could ascertain the identity of a town's true leaders – which storekeeper was respected, which farmer was listened to other farmers – only through endless hours of subtle probing of reticent men." [8]

On Writing and Biography

His approach to the craft of writing is as disciplined as his research.

"You're never going to achieve what you want to, Mr. Caro, if you don't stop thinking with your fingers." [12][14]
"I can't start writing a book until I've thought it through and can see it whole in my mind. So before I start writing, I boil the book down to three paragraphs, or two, or one—that's when it comes into view." [15]
"I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter." [1]
"I put on a jacket and a tie to come to work, because when I was young everybody wore jackets and ties to work, and I want to remind myself that I'm going to a job. I have to produce." [14]
"I write down how many words I've done in a day. Not to the word – I count the lines. I do it as we used to do in the newspaper business, ten words to a line. I try to do at least three pages a day." [14]
"Robert Caro knows the last line of every book he writes, even before he starts writing them. Among all his research, and all his prose, it is his end point. A flag on the mountain summit. An anchor." [12]
"Writing, they say, is re-writing." [11]
"For Caro, biography must serve as a “vessel for something even more significant: examination of the essential nature—the most fundamental realities—of political power.”" [10]
"What convinces is conviction. You simply have to believe in the argument you are advancing; if you don't, you're as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn't there." [3][4]
"I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless." [1]

On Lyndon B. Johnson

Caro's multi-volume biography of LBJ has provided unparalleled insight into the 36th president.

"Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life." [3][4]
"We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation." [3][4]
"Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately." [3][4]
"If one characteristic of Lyndon Johnson was a boundless ambition, another was a willingness, on behalf of that ambition, to make efforts that were also without bounds." [3]
"In the twentieth century, with its eighteen American presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the greatest champion that black Americans and Mexican-Americans and indeed all Americans of color had in the White House, the greatest champion they had in all the halls of government." [3]
"He not only had the gift of “reading” men and women, of seeing into their hearts, he also had the gift of putting himself in their place, of not just seeing what they felt but of feeling what they felt, almost as if what had happened to them had happened to him, too."
" [3]Kennedy would understand. Lyndon Johnson wouldn't understand. He would refuse to understand. He would threaten you, would cajole you, bribe you or charm you, he would do whatever he had to. But he would get the vote." [9]
"And as Lyndon Johnson came up Capitol Hill in the morning, he would be running." [9]
"He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those whom social justice had so long been denied." [4]
"In every election in which he ran – not only in college, but thereafter – he displayed a willingness to do whatever was necessary to win: a willingness so complete that even in the generous terms of political morality, it amounted to amorality.” [8]

On History and Humanity

Caro's work transcends biography to offer broader reflections on history and the human condition.

"History is a way of revealing something about the human condition. A great work of history, then, aspires not just to tell a story–about a person or place, event or period–but reveal some truth about life." [10]
"Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience— a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask." [3]
"It is the triumph of a cause that I am concerned about, and I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted, and be willing to face the consequences, whatever they are, and if he is filled with fear, he cannot do it." [3]
"He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." (On Robert Moses) [5]
"Knowledge gained in any field, in any struggle, is a real bath for the imagination – it sensitizes the mind." [6]

Learn more:

Lessons from Robert Caro

On Power

On Research and Truth

On Writing and Biography

On Lyndon B. Johnson

On History and Humanity

Written by Antoine Buteau

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