Theodore White Quotes

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.

I saw Chungking for the first time more than 40 years ago - a city of hills and mists, of grays and lavenders, two rivers shaping it to a point and the cliff rising above me like a challenge.

If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free - however free one can be on this planet.

He who is created by television can be destroyed by television.

When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he’s nobody’s friend.

The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie.

You can't get unless you give. And you have to give without wanting to get.

Quality in a classical Greek sense is how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy.

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.

With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.

If you go back through 2000 years, I guess luck, Marx, and God have made history, the three of them together.

I class myself as a manual laborer.

The job of intellectuals is to come up with ideas, and all we've been producing is footnotes.

With electricity we were wired into a new world, for electricity brought the radio, a "crystal set" and with enough ingenuity, one could tickle the crystal with a cat's whisker and pick up anything.

It is almost nicer being a godfather than a father, like having white mice but making your nanny feed them for you.

I, alas, must present myself somewhat ignominiously as a chef in a busy kitchen. Somewhere a novel is bubbling on a back burner, an old attempt at history may come out of the freezer.

Always inflation comes gradually; is recognized too late; and can be cured only by ruthless political surgery, which, if delayed too long, proves futile.

A President and his wise men can only propose; but Congress disposes. It is when President and Congress agree that American history marches forward.

Closeness to power heightens the dignity of all men.

The American dream is not over. America is an adventure.

Politics in America is the binding secular religion.

I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.

Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future.

The President's decisions make the weather, and if he is great enough, change the climate, too.

Although Christianity has never been the guarantee of a democratic state anywhere in the world, no democracy has ever thrived successfully for any period of time outside of Christian influence.

America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose.

History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.

I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind and I cannot do anything else but write about it.

There is no excitement anywhere in the world short of war to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.