"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -President Ulysses S. Grant
"They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler."
"Language is utterly meaningless. Everything is placed into its category in the tribal war and who its real victims are: Donald Trump and his minions. Poor little billionaire president who can’t catch a break. It’s incredible. Are we all just extras in this guy’s movie? But I do feel as if his approach has worked for him his whole life... He’s a man who has suffered no consequences. His is a recklessness born of experience. He’s like a malevolent Mr. Magoo."
"Mr. Trump was foggy on how he first came to do business with Bayrock, a small development company whose offices were in Trump Tower in Midtown. In a deposition a few years ago, he said it might have been a Bayrock associate, Felix H. Sater, who first approached him in the early 2000s. Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, had recently joined Bayrock at the behest of its founder, Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet-era commerce official originally from Kazakhstan. Bayrock, which was developing commercial properties in Brooklyn, proposed that Mr. Trump license his name to hotel projects in Florida, Arizona and New York, including Trump SoHo."
"In 1973, a brash young would-be developer from Queens met one of New York’s premier power brokers: Roy Cohn, whose name is still synonymous with the rise of McCarthyism and its dark political arts. With the ruthless attorney as a guide, Trump propelled himself into the city’s power circles and learned many of the tactics that would inexplicably lead him to the White House years later."
"Trump’s problem is not so much what he’s done, but how he’s done it. I decided at the start that I wanted to profile him by describing his deals — not his lifestyle or his personality. After getting to know him, I realized that his deals are his life. He once told me: 'I won’t make a deal just to make a profit. It has to have flair.' Another Manhattan developer said it differently: 'Trump won’t do a deal unless there’s something extra — a kind of moral larceny — in it. He’s not satisfied with a profit. He has to take something more. Otherwise, there’s no thrill.'"
Donald J. Trump — A Russian Agent, Wrecker, and Traitor 