Top 11 Quotes by Rick Perlstein

Ive summarized dozens of books in my literary career; its become rather second nature.

Ive summarized dozens of books in my literary career; its become rather second nature.

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

"Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America". Book by Rick Perlstein, 2010.

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

"Inside the GOP’s Fact-Free Nation" by Rick Perlstein, www.motherjones.com. May 2011.

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, Knows

In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.

Rick Perlstein

Religious, Qualms About, Theological

I cant summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tatis Play Time. You just have to see it.

Rick Perlstein

Play, Play Time, My Favorite

No historical analogies are exactly precise.

Rick Perlstein

Historical, Analogies, Precise

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

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, Top Down