I added another chapter, the story of John Paton Davies, one of the most distinguished of the China hands who had had his career savaged during the McCarthy years. The section reflected my belief that in a better and healthier society he or someone like him might have been sitting in as Assistant Secretary of State during the Vietnam decisions.

— David Halberstam

David Halberstam Quotes

All professions have some element of theater to them.

— David Halberstam

His counterpart at Chevy, a man named Bill Holler, had once gathered all of his regional salesmen around a brand-new model, opened the door, looked at them all long and solemnly, and then slammed the door as hard as he could. “Boys,” he announced, “I’ve just slammed the door on the best goddam car in the world” – and a huge cheer went up.

— David Halberstam

When he studied, it was not so much for a promotion as to EXCEL at his job.

— David Halberstam

One percent of the population ruled – and they were all grafters – while the other ninety-nine percent live under the worst kind of feudalism.

— David Halberstam

Karl Marx, Amaya liked to say, was the last great philosopher of the coal age; his workers were locked into a serflike condition. Had Marx witnessed the industrial explosion of the Oil Century and the rising standard of living it produced among ordinary workers, he might have written differently.

— David Halberstam

She was young and scared, and hadn’t realized there was time to spare.

— David Halberstam

He seemed touched by a larger spirit, his course guided by something beyond him, so talented, so able, so good-natured that he did not even inspire envy in a city rich with envy.

— David Halberstam

When one of the children of his friend Harvey Firestone boasted that he had some savings in the bank, Ford lectured the child. That money was idle. What the child should do, Ford said, was spend the money on tools. “Make something,” he admonished. “Create something.

— David Halberstam

Listen, girlie,” said one of the executives of Cadillac, a particularly troubled company, to Maryann Keller, an astute and skeptical financial analyst on Wall Street, “it’s ready to turn around, and it’s going to be bigger than ever.

— David Halberstam

I still like boiled potatoes with the skins on,” he said, “and I do not want a man standing in back of my chair, laughing up his sleeve at me while I am taking the potatoes’ jackets off.” Of pleasure and material things he was wary. “I have never known what to do with money after my expenses were paid. I can’t squander it on myself without hurting myself,” he said, “and nobody wants to do that.

— David Halberstam

It hung heavily albeit secretly over the internal calculation of Democratic leaders of the period. But of course it was never discussed in the major newspapers and magazine articles that analyzed policy making in Vietnam. It was a secret subject, reflecting secret fears.

— David Halberstam

A good team was simply a group of very disparate athletes who assembled each day from radically different lives and – with luck – for one shared moment put aside their differences, their dislikes, their egos and their rivalries, harnessing their energies towards a common goal.

— David Halberstam

Bobby Kennedy said that when he had been a boy there were three major influences on children – the home, the church, and the school – and now there was a fourth – television.

— David Halberstam

Mr. Ford, here is our new plant,” Lord Perry, who was the head of Ford in Europe, said proudly. “Where is the water?” the old man asked. “There isn’t any water,” Lord Perry replied. “Well, let’s get out of here,” Ford said. “I don’t even want to look at it.” That had ended the ceremony. Ford had driven off, and they had torn down the plant and moved it to a deep-water site.

— David Halberstam

The problem with military policies that are built to domestic specifications and do not take into account the complexity of the real world is that eventually the real world intrudes.

— David Halberstam

He never, even in the most casual conversation with friends, spoke a sentence which did not sound as if it was ready for the air.

— David Halberstam

The closer journalists came to great issues, the more vulnerable they felt.

— David Halberstam

He was perceived to be intellectually promiscuous, a little too eager to please all groups.

— David Halberstam

She was more sure of her politics than she was of herself.

— David Halberstam

He understood that the key to success, the secret to it, was the mastery of the grunt work, all the little details.

— David Halberstam
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