Moses concluded reform methods could never achieve large-scale dreams

Evidence

There was one more lesson. It was one he had started learning years before, and now it had finally sunk in. Would dreams—dreams of real size and significance and scope—the accomplishment his mother had taught him was so important, ever be realized by the methods of the men in whose ranks he had once marched, the reformers and idealists? He asked the question of himself and he answered it himself. No. The method he had adopted to turn his Long Island dream into reality was the way to accomplish something. It was the way to get things done. It was, he concluded, the only way. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 970

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The whole Power Broker hinges on this conversion moment — the moral turning point where Moses abandons idealism for power. It resists summary and frames his entire subsequent career.
• XREF: connects to: Moses learned reform is useless without pledged executive support — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 373; Being stripped of power freed Moses’s imagination but left it with nowhere to act — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4666; Moses’s early failure came from ignoring greed, self-interest, and the drive for power — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 376

Broader Connections

• Moses learned reform is useless without pledged executive support #qualifies (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 373
• Being stripped of power freed Moses’s imagination but left it with nowhere to act #expands (0.78) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4666
• Moses’s early failure came from ignoring greed, self-interest, and the drive for power #qualifies (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 376