On His Own Terms Quotes

“We shall be conservative,” Rockefeller asserts, “for we know the measureless value that is our heritage…. We shall be liberal—for we are vastly more interested in the opportunities of tomorrow than the problems of yesterday. We shall be progressive—for the opportunities and the challenges are of such size and scope that we can never halt and say: our labor is done.”2”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“Rockefeller countered with a $50 million expansion of the state court system, including the creation of a hundred or more politically appetizing supreme court judgeships, each one paying $43,316. Pressed on whether appointing these justices violated the state constitution, which mandated their popular election, Rockefeller had a ready response: “It’s only unconstitutional if you call them a Supreme Court judge. Call them something else, it’s constitutional.”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“MEADE ESPOSITO HAD a simple explanation for Rockefeller’s failure to achieve the presidency: “He was too liberal for the Republicans, and too conservative for the Democrats.” Were”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“Chairing the inquiry was Professor George Taylor of the University of Pennsylvania, himself an arbitrator and industrial relations adviser to five U.S. presidents. As impressive as the group’s credentials was its work ethic: members took less than three months to present their findings. Though received too late in the legislative calendar for any action to be taken in 1966, Rockefeller assured the committee it had not labored in vain. Enactment of the Taylor Law—so christened because no politician would put his name on it—became a top gubernatorial priority the following year. The”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“abolish the widely flaunted requirement that taverns serve food. Once again conventional roles were reversed, as Rockefeller argued for a free market solution and his critics conjured a New York, in the words of conservative Republican lawmaker John Marchi of Staten Island, deregulated into “a wide-open market, a dumping ground for cheap liquor, a paradise for the conniver and the loss-leader advocate.”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“By the time Rockefeller left office in 1973, SUNY was the world’s largest university system, with a quarter million students attending classes on sixty-four campuses. For”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“As a candidate for governor, he vowed renewed support for the State University of New York (SUNY)—in truth hardly a university at all, but an undistinguished jumble of twenty-nine teachers colleges, agricultural schools, technical institutes, and medical schools, the entire underfunded system serving thirty-nine thousand students. Only one institution of the lot, Binghamton’s Harpur College, bestowed a liberal arts degree.”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“Judgeships are the mother’s milk of politics, their desirability a rare instance of bipartisan agreement. A deal struck at the tag end of the session promised a dozen new judges for Manhattan and Brooklyn, with two Democrats joining the bench for every Republican.”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“Throughout the world today the rights of the individual or corporation to possess property are being challenged…if we wish to continue our present system of individual initiative and private ownership, management must conduct its affairs with a sense of moral and social responsibility in such a way as to contribute to the general welfare of society. —NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER, remarks to the 1937 annual meeting, Standard Oil of New Jersey”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“There is no problem that cannot be solved. —NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“diplomats took up the vastly more”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“I got the job the way I get all my jobs,” Rockefeller said later of his appointment as coordinator of inter-American affairs. “I thought up something that had to be done and somebody”—in this instance, the president of the United States—“said, ‘O.K. it’s your idea. Now let’s see you make it work.”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“Reacting much as anyone does when”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

“public protest of the direction his party is taking. Convention”
― Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller