Rick Perlstein famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

It takes two things to make a political lie work: a powerful person or institution willing to utter it, and another set of powerful institutions to amplify it.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Powerful #Lying #Two
When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Republic #Faces #Foundation
It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Sex #Mean #Political
In Ronald Reagans case, he always bore with him this extraordinary ability to radiate confidence, optimism, clarity, a blitheness of spirit, in what other people saw as chaos. And after the 1970s, that was catnip.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Optimism #People #Saws
No historical analogies are exactly precise.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Historical #Analogies
I cant summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tatis Play Time. You just have to see it.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Play #My Favorite
In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Religious #Theological #Qualms
Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Jobs #Suffering #Indignity
Ive summarized dozens of books in my literary career; its become rather second nature.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Book #Careers #Dozen
Imagine a senator running for president whose positions included halving the military budget, socializing the medical system, re-regulating the communications and electrical industries, establishing a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans, and equalizing funding for all schools regardless of property valuations - and who promised to fire Alan Greenspan, counseled withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and, for good measure, spoke warmly of adolescent sexual experimentation. That was Barry Goldwater, conservative.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Running #Military #Communication
In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.
-- Rick Perlstein

#Explaining #Ifs

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