Author

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

From Rick Perlstein

I've summarized dozens of books in my literary career; it's become rather second nature.

From Rick Perlstein

I can't summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tati's 'Play Time.' You just have to see it.

From Rick Perlstein

For conservative leaders, making candidates pay them court, publicly and ostentatiously, is a colossal source of their symbolic power before their followers. It's kabuki theater, mostly.

From Rick Perlstein

Ronald Reagan never did much to make abortion illegal. He did, however, deliver videotaped greetings, fulsome in praise for his hosts, to antiabortion rallies on the Mall.

From Rick Perlstein

Bill de Blasio was swept to the New York mayoralty on the promise of getting Gracie Mansion out from under the thumb of corporate elites.

From Rick Perlstein

Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the citizens.

From Rick Perlstein

Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions that reason can't shake.

From Rick Perlstein

Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory.

From Rick Perlstein

Prediction is structurally inseparable from the business of punditry: It creates the essential image of indefatigable authority that is punditry's very architecture; it flows from that calcified image, and it provides the substance for the story that keeps getting told about the inevitability of American progress.

From Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein

Notable Quotes

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