Rick Perlstein Quotes

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it.

The head of Goldwater's California operation "what was so uncomfortable around people that he worked up a routine to deal with employees with whom he was forced to share an elevator: "Taken your vacation yet?" he would ask when they entered; answer took just long enough to deliver him to his fourth-floor office.

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

He fetishized limits.

Fifties advertising was a dogmatic art, to the point of pretending to be a science.

Television was suppressing their freedom not to know.

Chits knew no ideology.

Ronald Reagan was just as angry. But he made you want to stand right alongside him and shake your fist at the same things he was shaking his fist at.