American Scoundrel Quotes

“Cohn taught Trump to “ignore the rules, do what you want to do, don’t leave a paper trail, don’t keep a calendar, never do things in writing, and if somebody gets onto you, rat out other people to save yourself. Delay, delay, delay ’cause grand juries have a limited time, and you can run out the clock. And call in the news media. Make up a fantastic story. We’re just honest businessmen who are being attacked by these corrupt New York City police, or FBI agents,”
― Kai Bird, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump

“have a basic sense of the unimportance of everything,” Cohn told Esquire. “You live seventy years. Civilization goes on after you’re gone, so what difference does it make?”
― Kai Bird, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump

“He thought McCarthy was guilty of using the tactic of repeating over and over again a big lie, the same tactic “used by Hitler and again used by Stalin that if you repeat something often enough people are going to believe it.”
― Kai Bird, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump

“Like most reality television, much of the show was boring and tedious. But there were some memorable moments. McCarthy found it amusing to label anyone who disagreed with him with a denigrating nickname. Senator Stuart Symington became “Sanctimonious Stu.” Senator Margaret Chase Smith was “Snow White.” General George C. Marshall was “Genghis Khan.” Ivy League professors were all “twisted intellectuals.”
― Kai Bird, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump

“embrace progressive values, science, and egalitarian principles. Adler exhorted his students to use their “ethical imagination” to see “things not as they are, but as they might be.”
― Kai Bird, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump