Robert Sherwood Quotes

History is a burden. Stories can make us fly.

Doctor: 'I am not a hero." Robin Hood: 'Well, neither am I, but if we both keep pretending to be, perhaps others will be heroes in our name. Perhaps we will both be stories and may those stories never end.

Robert Ingersoll came to [a small Midwest town] to speak . . . , and after he had gone the question of the divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens.

There is a persistent theory, held by those who prate most steadily about "the American way of life" that the average American is a rugged individualist to whom the whole conception of "leadership" is something foreign and distasteful—and this theory would certainly seem to be in accord with our national tradition of lawlessness and disrespect for authority. But it is not entirely consistent with the facts. We Americans are inveterate hero worshipers, to a far greater extent than are the British and the French. We like to personalize our loyalties, our causes. In our political or business or labor organizations, we are comforted by the knowledge that at the top is a Big Boss whom we are free to revere or to hate and upon whom we can depend for quick decisions when the going gets tough. The same is true of our Boy Scout troops and our criminal gangs. It is most conspicuously true of our passion for competitive sport. We are trained from childhood to look to the coach for authority in emergencies. The masterminding coach who can send in substitutes with instructions whenever he feels like it—or even send in an entirely new team—is a purely American phenomenon. In British football the team must play through the game with the same eleven men with which it started and with no orders from the sidelines; if a man is injured and forced to leave the field the team goes on playing with only ten men. In British sport, there are no Knute Rocknes or Connie Macks, whereas in American sport the mastermind is considered as an essential in the relentless pursuit of superiority.

Harpo, a shy and silent fellow, was taken up by the Algonquin crowd, at that time probably the most famous and brilliant conversational group in America. On a clear day, a good many of the following would be assembled there for lunch and mayhem: George Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Franklin P. Adams, Dorothy Parker, Newman Levy, Robert Sherwood, Howard Dietz and many others.

Now come I, forsooth, from good Banbury Town," said the jolly Tinker, "and no one nigh Nottingham--nor Sherwood either, an that be the mark-- can hold cudgel with my grip. Why, lads, did I not meet that mad wag Simon of Ely, even at the famous fair at Hertford Town, and beat him in the ring at that place before Sir Robert of Leslie and his lady? This same Robin Hood, of whom, I wot, I never heard before, is a right merry blade, but gin he be strong, am not I stronger? And gin he be sly, am not I slyer? Now by the bright eyes of Nan o' the Mill, and by mine own name and that's Wat o' the Crabstaff, and by mine own mother's son, and that's myself, will I, even I, Wat o' the Crabstaff, meet this same sturdy rogue, and gin he mind not the seal of our glorious sovereign King Harry, and the warrant of the good Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, I will so bruise, beat, and bemaul his pate that he shall never move finger or toe again! Hear ye that, bully boys?

No cosmic dramatist could possibly devise a better entrance for a new President—or a new Dictator, or a new Messiah—than that accorded to Franklin Roosevelt,” White House aide Robert Sherwood observed, aligning himself with those who believe that a leader is summoned to the fore by the needs of the time.

Cavalcade productions. The writing was from the best hands in the business, young playwright Arthur Miller becoming (as Barnouw remembers it) a kind of “utility man” who could be tapped for spur-of-the-moment work on the most rigid deadlines. Special projects were put together by Carl Sandburg, Stephen Vincent Benét, Maxwell Anderson, and Robert Sherwood.

. ·Change or expand employee assignments periodically. Do not destroy capable people by trapping them in "indispensable" functions that lead nowhere.

Stephenson did more than simply cultivate Donovan. In 1940, he reported back to his handlers in England that “There is no doubt we can achieve infinitely more through Donovan than through any other individual.… He is very receptive … and can be trusted to represent our needs in the right quarters and in the right way in the U.S.A.”18 Donovan’s COI and OSS were, in all actuality, the offspring of these British-led efforts, and a great deal of the decisions Donovan made were influenced by figures tied to Stephenson’s BSC. Before the COI was up and running, for example, Donovan conferred closely with Robert Sherwood, a playwright, ardent interventionist and close confidant of President Roosevelt. “On June 16th, 1941,” writes Thomas Mahl, “Sherwood sent to Donovan a list of people he thought he could trust, ‘for the work we discussed … yesterday evening at your home’.”19 At the time, Sherwood was working closely with the BSC – even sending them copies of speeches he had written for the president