A great deal of Roosevelt's almost magical talent for persuading and manipulating the American people lay in his ability to state his thoughts in simple, homely phrases, in the language of the working neighborhood where visitors sat in the kitchen, with puppies frolicking under the stove, husbands wearing working clothes and wives their one-dollar house-dresses.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

By early 1943, the Pentagon was complete-a building big enough to house forty thousand people and all their accoutrements, the largest building in the world, conceived, funded, designed and constructed in a little more than a year. And on the day it was finished, it was already too small.

In the forties [1940s] in Washington it was still unusual for a rich and socially well-connected married woman to work. If she did, her husband was assumed by his peers to be unable to support a household on his own and somehow to be inadequate.

Late into the [1944 election] night, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey still had not sent the usual polite message of congratulation to the winner. And so Roosevelt finally went upstairs to bed, riding up in the small elevator originally installed in the [Hyde Park] house to carry the family's trunks up and down. He said of Dewey, "He's still a son of a bitch."

In the nineteenth century, government agencies in Washington had, almost without exception, flatly refused to hire even one female.