John Gray on What You Shouldn't Look for In Politics

"One shouldn't look to politics for human salvation. And one shouldn't look to politics for meaning in life. If you do you'll be terribly disappointed. You should look to politics as a way to protect yourself, the people you care about so that you'll be able to find or make a meaning in life." 

- John Gray

Sapphaccino and Greek Literature

Overheard in a Greek cafe.

"My knowledge of Greek literature begins and ends with the Iliad and the Oddity," she said before taking another sip of Sapphaccino, a curious concoction the waiter had suggested as a stimulating drink best shared with that certain someone.

LBJ, Robert Caro and Power

Lyndon Baines Johnson's biographer Robert Caro pushes back against Lord Acton's familiar axiom: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Caro saw something else.

"Power doesn't always corrupt. Power reveals. When a person gets power, you see what was underneath all along. With Johnson, what you see is that as soon as he had it, he passed the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, roughly a century earlier."

Related, LBJ's political career lasted 32 years. In 1937, he was elected to the House of Representatives and his presidency concluded in January of 1969.

Robert Caro has been researching and writing his multi-volume biography of LBJ for 49 years and the fifth and final volume is still in progress.

A half century+ to complete the biography of a career that lasted three decades.