Al David Quotes

If you want people to to think, give them intent, not instruction.

My father taught me how to understand and be sensitive to others, which is probably the most critical aspect of leadership. Without it you are only a manager.

The first thing I am going to tell my successor is, don't trust the military men – even on military matters." JFK

Organizing a coup was not the same as wanting one.

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley

Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.

Nixon wanted view and advice brought to him through intermediaries. He wanted information filtered as it came to him – and he wanted his filters to filter his will back to those whom he must direct.

Eisenhower on LBJ: "He hadn't got the depth of mind nor the breath vision to carry great responsibility.

Henry Cabot Lodge was like medicine, good for you, but hard to take. – Teddy White

The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".

Jack Kennedy protected a mature and presidential image – tough, yet not unduly combative.

What we saw in Richard Nixon's face was the panic in his soul. – Richard Goodwin

A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. – Lloyd Hand

Jack had an actor's control." Chuck Spalding

Jousting with an obvious hoodlum couldn't hurt.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. – Calvin Coolidge

Leaders lead by example. No leader asks more than he is prepared to give himself.

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life.

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier – it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal

While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122)

To require perfection is to invite paralysis.

She must disappear for a time from the human surface, And sacrifice everything for this, To recreate herself from the depths of her world.

Words do not always need a destination.We can leave them behind us at the borders of feelings.Running around headless in the vague zone.And that is the privilege of artists: to live in confusion.

Most great products have been made over the dead bodies of experts.

The ability to find pixilation amid the pixelation is at the essence of the gift of celestial Grace.

The relentless persistence of Light eventually exhausts darkness.

How can I survive without a book to read?

The moment you establish a line of communication between two points, you subtly change both. That is also true for the way the brain is affected by the mind.

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

Ideas are the currency of innovation.

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or musi

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to

marinate your mind

Milkshakes make the world seem less shitty.

History is just a way of keeping score, but it doesn't have to be who we are.

It's a date.""It's a cookie.""It's a cookie date.

Bonding over illegal drugs hadn't magically solved our problems,

Just the perfect peace of nothingness. That's what I believed.

I never want to see umbrellas around me." he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire.

Deep is the chasm between the centuries, but by bridging it a man may return home.

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human i

Do you think people love having jobs, Sylvia asks Peter in because they offer a condoned but false responsibility that masks, for at least eight hours a day, true responsibility?

Can't say a body ever gets used to hard work

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?"I said nothing."What colour's a blackbird?" she said."Black""Typical!

Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next...

The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.

The stars were better company anyway. They were very beautiful, and they almost never snored.

If people were more concerned with how they looked on the inside, then on the outside, the world would be a nicer place to exist.