Romney Quotes

“You need to understand,” George replied, “that just being right or just being best doesn’t mean that most people will agree with you.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“I was accused of being inauthentic. But in reality, that's just who I am," he told me. "I am the authentic person who seems inauthentic.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“Romney was not an ideologue. He prided himself on this fact. Though he was a Republican, he had no patience for Rush Limbaugh and never read the National Review. If he adhered to any kind of conservatism at all, it was of the small-c variety. He was a believer in fiscal prudence and sober thinking, in well-produced white papers and the Wall Street Journal, in spreadsheets and data and running the numbers one more time. He saw himself, proudly, as a partisan of pragmatism.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“I think what presidents accomplish by virtue of their personal character is at least as great as what they accomplish by virtue of their policies”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“He is unquestionably mentally unstable, and he is racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, vulgar and prone to violence. There is simply no rational argument that could lead me to vote for someone with those characteristics. I believe your endorsement of him severely diminishes you morally—though probably not politically—and that you must withdraw that support to preserve your integrity and character.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“developed the motorized iBOT wheelchair and the”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“The Romney home could be chaotic and loud. Basketballs flew across the living room. Wrestling matches broke out spontaneously. More than once, Ann became so overwhelmed by the boys’ misbehavior that she simply got in her car and drove away.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“Romney tried to be at peace with not knowing what was on the horizon. He thought about the words of a hymn he sang in church: “Keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for me.” In the end, it was an”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“Authoritarianism is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral, ready to pounce.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“Romney, of all people, knew the power of such rationalizations. But he also knew the pandering came with a cost. The elected leaders of his party had forgotten how to say no to their base. They’d forgotten how to do unpopular things simply because they were right. That muscle had atrophied—and Romney believed voters would notice sooner or later.”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning

“Great Depression times 100” and hyperinflation on par with the Weimar Republic. Fox News was running stories suggesting that Obama had deployed the Secret Service to monitor the conservative network. And a bizarre conspiracy theory about the president’s birthplace was beginning to gain traction—boosted by an unlikely spokesman. Donald Trump had begun popping up on political talk shows to muse about whether Barack Obama might perhaps be a secret Muslim born in Kenya who’d defrauded American voters to get elected to the presidency. This theory had been kicking around the fringes of U.S. political discourse for years and had already been debunked, but suddenly it—and Trump—were everywhere. On The View: “I want him to show his birth certificate. There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.” On Fox News: “He’s spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue.… A lot of facts are emerging and I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.” On The Laura Ingraham Show: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ ” On the Today show: “If he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility… then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.” Romney”
― McKay Coppins, Romney: A Reckoning