Tom Wicker quotes:

He [John F. Kennedy] might have envisioned himself being "alone, at the top" but, like Woodrow Wilson, he would find out that not even a President moves free of human entanglement, human needs, human illusions; not even a President can be independent of those around him.

Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background.

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it.

It's a truism that denials never quite catch up with charges. Honest journalists who may have mistakenly printed false information know that the most prominent retraction never quite undoes the damage done by the original publication.

Government expands to absorb revenue - and then some.

Consensus politics is a cyclical thing-in order to accumulate power, one must dispose of it, and as one disposes of it, one must accumulate more power to replace it. In financial terms, a dollar must be spent to make a dollar-or two, if things go well.

Offices are not powerful because they exist; men make them so. Rights are not honored because they exist; men compel their recognition.

There seldom is enmity between seasoned old politicians, who know as much as men can of human weakness and human strength.

If the true freedom of the press is to decide for itself what to publish and when to publish it, the true responsibility of the press must be to assert and defend that freedom... What the press in America needs is less inhibition, not more restraint.

To know things as they are is better than to believe things as they seem.