The Power Broker Quotes

“Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“...his success in public relations had been due primarily to his masterful utilization of a single public relations technique: identifying himself with a popular cause. This technique was especially advantageous to him because his philosophy--that accomplishment, Getting Things Done, is the only thing that matters, that the end justifies any means, however ruthless--might not be universally popular. By keeping the public eye focused on the cause, the end, the ultimate benefit to be obtained, the technique kept the public eye from focusing on the methods by which the method was to be obtained.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? (Robert Moses)”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“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. 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”.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses)”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“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.
To free his hands for the grab, he shook impatiently from them the last crumbs of the principles with which he had entered public service and for which, during his years of idealism, he had fought só hard.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“You can get an awful lot of good done in the world if you're willing to let someone else take the credit for it.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Someday, let us sit on this bench and reflect on the gratitude of man."

Down in the audience, the ministers of the empire of Moses glanced at one another and nodded their heads. RM was right as usual, they whispered. Couldn't people see what he had done?

Why weren't they grateful?”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... 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." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas -- the best beaches -- by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards [...] were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently -- and the Governor never raised the matter again.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself].”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“yet the realities of the democratic process in America make it almost impossible to get a road, a bridge, a housing project, a bathhouse or a park approved and built in two years—or four. The”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“The city in which the shaping by his hand is most evident is New York, Titan of cities, collosal synthesis of urban hope and urban despair. It has become a cliché by the mid-twentieth century to say that New York was "ungovernable," and this meant, since the powers of government in the city had largely devolved on its mayor, that no mayor could govern it, could hope to do more than merely stay afloat in the maelstrom that had engulfed the vast metropolis. In such a context, the cliché was valid. No mayor shaped New York; no mayor—not even La Guardia—left upon its roiling surface more than the faintest of lasting imprints.

But Robert Moses shaped New York.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“But, in the fight of his later career, what is most interesting is that when he realized that, because of the handicap of his religion, his brilliance and idealism would not take him to the top in the world of Yale, he made, within Yale, a world of his own, and a world, moreover, in which, in collegiate terms, he had power and influence.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Democracy had not solved the problem of building large-scale urban public works, so Moses solved it by ignoring democracy.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“In searching for the causes of these problems, Progressives settled on the most easily identifiable—the giant corporations and corrupt political bosses who they felt had stolen mythical America away from its people.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“In democratic America, supposedly, ultimate power rests in the voters, and the man for whom the majority of them cast their votes is the repository of that power. But Wagner knew better. The spectators may have thought he had a choice in dealing with Moses. He knew that he did not. Why, when Moses pushed the appointment blank across his desk, did the Mayor say not a word? Possibly because there was nothing to say. Power had spoken.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“he”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“DREAMS—visions of public works on a noble scale—had been marching through Bob Moses’ mind in almost continuous procession for a decade and more. Not one of them had marched out of his mind into reality. But during that decade, 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. To free his hands for the grab, he shook impatiently from them the last crumbs of the principles with which he had entered public service and for which, during the years of his idealism, he had fought so hard.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Subway walls were covered with verbal filth; the scenery amid which the New Yorker traveled around his city was a vast mosaic of FUCK and SUCK and COCK and CUNT.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“The Governor does not hold office by hereditary right. He is elected for a fixed term by universal suffrage. He is controlled in all minor appointments by the civil service law. He cannot spend a dollar of the public money which is not authorized by the Legislature of the State. He is subject to removal by impeachment. If he were given the powers here proposed he would stand out in the limelight of public opinion and scrutiny. Economy in administration, if accomplished, would redound to his credit. Waste and extravagance could be laid at his door. Those who cannot endure the medicine because it is too strong must be content with waste, inefficiency and bungling—and steadily rising cost of government. The system here proposed is more democratic, not more “royal,” than that now in existence. Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections. In order that the people may hold their government to account they must have a government that they can understand. No citizen can hope to understand the present collection of departments, offices, boards and commissions, or the present methods of appropriating money. A Governor with a cabinet of reasonable size, responsible for proposing a program in the annual budget and for administering the program as modified by the Legislature, may be brought daily under public scrutiny, be held accountable to the Legislature and public opinion, and be turned out of office if he fails to measure up to public requirements. If this is not democracy then it is difficult to imagine what is.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“operatives of the demagogue publisher’s Journal-American were posing as Columbia University students to entrap professors into radical remarks,”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Robert Moses built 255 playgrounds in New York City during the 1930’s. He built one playground in Harlem.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“He rammed bulkheads of steel deep into the muck beneath rivers and harbors and crammed into the space beneath bulkheads and shore immensities of earth and stone, shale and cement, that hardened into fifteen thousand acres of new land and thus altered the physical boundaries of the city.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“from the idealist who put his faith in truth and reason to the pragmatist who put his faith in power.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“He had been able to employ lawyers numerous enough and clever enough to utilize the technicalities of the law to frustrate the intent of the law,”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“The Casino, he said, "has long been an honoroable, useful, beloved, admired, valuable and even historic monument... The Park Commissioner has no more power to destroy the Casino than he has to destroy the... treasured relics of generations here. He is only to hold office for a brief term. He is the passing creature of a day. He will in time, and that no long, be superseded. He may no 'waste' the heritage of New York. In the meantime... he must restrain his extravagant, excessive energy and zeal or he must be restrained.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“Throughout, the zoo was proof piled on proof that Moses had been able, to some extent at least, to make imagination take the place of money.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

“At the end of his leadership of the New York system, the total acreage of the state parks in the fifty states was 5,799,957. New York State alone had 2,567,256 of those acres—or 45 percent of all the state parks in the country.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York