Theodore White quotes

Theodore White was an esteemed American journalist and historian, best known for his insightful coverage of American politics. Born in 1915, he reported on major events like the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. White's most notable work was his series of books called "The Making of the President," which analyzed presidential campaigns from 1960 to 1972. His meticulous research and engaging writing style made him a trusted literary figure, earning him a Pulitzer Prize in 1962. Theodore White's profound impact on political journalism continues to inspire aspiring writers and historians alike.

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

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.

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

His passion has aroused the best and the beast in man. And the beast waited for him in the kitchen.

- Theodore White

I class myself as a manual laborer.

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

Politics in America is the binding secular religion.

- Theodore White

When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

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.

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

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

- Theodore White

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

- Theodore White

I'd get into a room and disappear into the woodwork. Now the rooms are so crowded with reporters getting behind-the-scenes stories that nobody can get behind-the-scenes stories.

- Theodore White

A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I'm somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill.

- Theodore White

For those men who, sooner or later, are lucky enough to break away from the pack, the most intoxicating moment comes when they cease being bodies in other men's command and find that they control their own time, when they learn their own voice and authority.

- Theodore White

When that book came out, it was like Columbus telling about America at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella.

- Theodore White