The path to power Quotes

“The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as "seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.”

“On the rare occasions on which a movie was shown, there was as much suspense in the audience over whether the electricity would hold out to the end of the film as there was in the film itself.”

“The farm work they hated was the only work they knew. Often, even the basic skills of plumbing or electricity or mechanical work were mysteries to them – as were the job discipline and the subtleties that children raised in the industrial world learn without thinking about them; starting work on time, working set hours, taking orders from strangers instead of their father, playing office politics.”

“No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South.”