7 Quotes & Sayings By Garry Wills

Garry Wills was born in New York City in 1935, and grew up in the Bronx. He graduated from Colgate University in 1957, and subsequently attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his law degree in 1962. He has taught at Columbia College (Chicago), Princeton University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School. He is also a writer, having written fifteen books on American history, religion, and politics; including the best-selling The Kennedy Imprisonment (1971), which won a National Book Award.

1
Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest. Garry Wills
2
Groves, with his eye for sizing up people who could get things done, saw the deep ambition Oppenheimer covered with his surface charm. Garry Wills
3
Arthur Schlesinger admits that JFK "succumbed to the fake omniscience of insiders". Prolonged immersion in the self-contained, self-justifying world of clandestinity and deception erodes the reality principle. Garry Wills
4
Politicians make good company for a while just as children do - their self-enjoyment is contagious. But they soon exhaust their favourite subjects -themselves. Garry Wills
5
The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership. Garry Wills
6
Leadership - mobilization toward a common goal. Garry Wills