Ron Suskind > Quotes

“It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mastering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“The whole game was about confidence, as it always was. Everything was fine—until it wasn't.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“If the breadth of perspectives is wide enough to represent the fullest range of views, consensus is unlikely. If consensus is swiftly achieved, it probably means too few voices have been heard.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“You are livin’,” she says in feigned exasperation. “You just don’t see what I see. You got something special. Something you got from your ma. It’s a thing. I mean, I wish I had it. It’s this thing where you know what it’s going to take, and then you get it done. You push yourself and you get there.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“A boy, if he's lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with a self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys unfold in this natural, measured way, growing up with at least one adult on the scene who can convincingly fake being all-powerful, omniscient, and unfailingly protective for a kid's first decade or so, providing an invaluable canopy of reachable stars and monsters that are comfortably make-believe.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“Das Unglück des Menschen rührt daher, daß er nicht still in seinem Zimmer bleiben will, dort, wo er hingehört. Sagt Pascal.
Man's misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. Pascal said that.”
― Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Trust is something you have to practice. Someday you're going to fall in love with someone, and you need to understand what trust is all about. What you doing now is developing bad practices of betraying people's trust.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“The key is to put your outrage in a place where you can get it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you're asked to explain new ideas or explain what you observed two people who share none of your experiences.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Das Unglück des Menschen rührt daher, daß er nicht still in seinem Zimmer bleiben will, dort, wo er hingehört. Sagt Pascal."
(Man's misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. Pascal said that)”
― Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about."

The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real.

"We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy."

Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do.

The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government.

But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry.

Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad.

"It's me," he said, always his opening.

He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off.

"I think I'm going to have to do this."

She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said.

She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him.

"Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it."

But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed.

Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate.

And then he realized she was crying.”
― Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill

“Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“If the opposite of certainty is doubt, humility must lie somewhere between the two,”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Author describes auto CEO's decisions to drive rather than fly to Washington as "showy penitence".”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Disequilibrium is often instigated by the will to power, a sleepless drive in the human personality to control others, to force them to do what one wants, or not to do what one opposes.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status.”
― Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

“Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“I'm [Paul O'Neill] an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me.”
― Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill

“Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.”
― Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

“...to prevent his nose from taking in the least bit of his own odour, he bent his body forwards, stretching his neck out as far as he could against the wind, with his arms stretched behind him.”
― Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism